And now for something completely different on the SMV. I’ve been interested in the Lindbergh kidnapping for as long as I can remember. This NOVA documentary takes a look at the case and concludes that while the man who was convicted of the crime, Richard Hauptmann, was guilty, he did not act alone. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Nova- Who Killed Lindbergh’s Baby?
And now for something completely different on the SMV. I’ve been interested in the Lindbergh kidnapping for as long as I can remember. This NOVA documentary takes a look at the case and concludes that while the man who was convicted of the crime, Richard Hauptmann, was guilty, he did not act alone. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Nova- Who Killed Lindbergh’s Baby?
It has been a blissfully quiet Hurricane season thus far. Weather conditions for development have been unfavorable, which is something I, uh, favor. It’s been so slow on the storm front that I haven’t spent too much time complaining about the wimpy names appended to far too many Hurricanes. I want Hurricane names to evoke fear, loathing, and all that jazz.This year’s list is pretty dull, it doesn’t have anything as silly as Danny or Florence but Hurricane Wendy does not inspire terror although I have two pretty terrifying friends of that name… Why am I going on about this? … Continue reading The (Hurricane) Name Game
Things take a literal turn with this week’s malaka of the week honoree, GOP Congressman Dr. Michael Burgess of Texas.He used to be an OB-GYN and used his, ahem, experience in that capacity to justify his support for the Trent (rape pregnancies are rare) Franks abortion ban bill: “There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20-weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15-weeks, 16-weeks,” said the former OB/GYN during the House … Continue reading Malaka Of The Week: Michael Burgess
Call me an oddball, but my favorite current weird news story is the whole Richard III skeleton found in a Leicester car park (Britspeak for parking lot) saga. It’s got it all: death, royals, and DNA. The pro-Plantagenet press corps is busy bashing the Tudor-ites who, in turn, are dissing the Windsors. I made that last bit up. It’s always fun when historical myth turns out to be true as it has in this case. Of course, it has also brought on a bit of revisionism as well: was poor Richard as bad as Shakespeare made him out to be? … Continue reading My Kingdom For A Tomb
Call me an oddball, but my favorite current weird news story is the wholeRichard III skeleton found in a Leicester car park (Britspeak for parking lot) saga. It’s got it all: death, royals, and DNA. The pro-Plantagenet press corps is busy bashing the Tudor-ites who, in turn, are dissing the Windsors. I made that last bit up. It’s always fun when historical myth turns out to be true as it has in this case. Of course, it has also brought on a bit of revisionism as well: was poor Richard as bad as Shakespeare made him out to be? Probably … Continue reading My Kingdom For A Tomb
Turning the lights on. SANAA — For Wafa Al-Rimi, Yemen’s revolution brought dark days. Though power outages are frequent in the country, Al-Rimi says during the past year’s unrest, some days saw less than an hour of electricity. Attempting to study for exams in those conditions got the 16-year-old and some of her classmates thinking: How could they keep the lights on? “We were tired of darkness,” Al-Rimi says. So, they turned to the sun. Damn right. A. Continue reading Fuck Yeah, Girls in Yemen!
Turning the lights on. SANAA — For Wafa Al-Rimi, Yemen’s revolution brought dark days. Though power outages are frequent in the country, Al-Rimi says during the past year’s unrest, some days saw less than an hour of electricity. Attempting to study for exams in those conditions got the 16-year-old and some of her classmates thinking: How could they keep the lights on? “We were tired of darkness,” Al-Rimi says. So, they turned to the sun. Damn right. A. Continue reading Fuck Yeah, Girls in Yemen!
I watch this every year, because I’ve always loved this story: This time of year, I’ve written before, is about grace from unlikely beginnings and light in dark times. The older I get, the less interested I am in the war on Christmas, the war over Christmas, the endless back and forth. It’s exhausting, and it isn’t the point. I’ve never understood why science is a threat to belief, why the earth has to be a certain age, why it matters that Jesus was born in summer, how long it really took the wise men to reach him. I’ve never … Continue reading Come Inside
I watch this every year, because I’ve always loved this story: This time of year, I’ve written before, is about grace from unlikely beginnings and light in dark times. The older I get, the less interested I am in the war on Christmas, the war over Christmas, the endless back and forth. It’s exhausting, and it isn’t the point. I’ve never understood why science is a threat to belief, why the earth has to be a certain age, why it matters that Jesus was born in summer, how long it really took the wise men to reach him. I’ve never … Continue reading Come Inside
I’ve not followed the HuffPo’s advice to not watch The Weight of the Nation, in no small part because I was hoping it would focus more on this: The fourth section: “… CHALLENGES, examines the major driving forces causing the obesity epidemic, including agriculture, economics, evolutionary biology, food marketing, racial and socioeconomic disparities, physical inactivity, American food culture, and the strong influence of the food and beverage industry.” This part of it is FASCINATING, though short shrift is given to the inherent race and class distinctions in health-related amenities in rich and poor communities. I could watch a whole series … Continue reading The Weight of Our Choices
I’ve not followed the HuffPo’s advice to not watchThe Weight of the Nation, in no small part becauseI was hoping it would focus more on this: The fourth section: “… CHALLENGES, examines the major driving forces causing the obesity epidemic, including agriculture, economics, evolutionary biology, food marketing, racial and socioeconomic disparities, physical inactivity, American food culture, and the strong influence of the food and beverage industry.” This part of it is FASCINATING, though short shrift is given to the inherent race and class distinctions in health-related amenities in rich and poor communities. I could watch a whole series just about … Continue reading The Weight of Our Choices
One of the arguments we always heard during the healthcare debate was that America is the driving force behind every major medical advance in the universe, since forever. Indeed, Tennessee’s ownJunior Senator Bob Corker had the nerve to tell Canada’s former Public Health Minister that Canada and France weremooching off of American innovation: we’re the ones coming up with all the technological breakthroughs, whichthey benefit from! And dammit, it’s unfair! It’sour money paying to develop cures for cancer! Parasites! Oh yes, that was embarassing. I thought of that when I read about a Cleveland researcher’s struggle to get funding to … Continue reading Best Healthcare In The World Blah Blah
A new study finds that drinking beer makes men smarter: Beer makes men smarter. So say researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago. They found that men with a couple beers under their belts were actually better at solving brain-teasers than their sober counterparts. To reach that surprising conclusion, the researchers devised a bar game in which 40 men were given three words and told to come up with a fourth that fits the pattern. For example, the word “cheese” could fit with words like “blue” or “cottage” or “Swiss.” Half the players were given two pints. The other … Continue reading I’ll drink to that
John Derbyshire is racist, but I’m not. This isn’t just me talking, it’sScience! I tookthis survey, called the Implicit Association Test, whichDerbyshire told Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor he had taken to determine if he’s really racist. He calls it “the best quantifier we have to date” on peoples’ attitudes toward race, because it flashes pictures of black people and pictures of white people, and then words that are positive and negative, all in rapid succession. You are supposed to push a particular button on your keyboard as quickly as possible in response to the images. It’s supposed to test your reflexive … Continue reading White Guilt
Dissing the Susan G Komen Foundation would have once seemed like shitting all over motherhood, the flag and apple pie. This week, however, the Foundation hascut off funding to Planned Parentohood for MAMMOGRAMS. This is as egregious a case of institutional malakatude and cowardice as I’ve ever seen. Women could die as a result of this “policy shift.’ The best thing I’ve read on this subject was by the fabulousMary Elizabeth Williams who is herself fighting a virulent form of cancer: Along the way, Komen has become the McDonald’s of cancer — an easy-to-remember brand with a logo that demands … Continue reading Malaka Of The Week: Susan G. Komen Foundation
ViaONTD, apparently our schools are now teaching Penguin Sex [Facebook link]: Jeff’s 6yr old son came home with a somewhat controversial book about gay penguins. Should the school have had this book in the library for kids in kindergarten and first grade? Let Deminski & Doyle know your take on it now. 1-800-283-1015 The comments to this post are full of angry parents who have lots of opinions about what should be taught in school and what should be taught at home. Spelling and grammar, for instance, is clearly something these kids are not going to get around the dinner … Continue reading Man on Man Penguin
It’s not often, lately anyway, that we read a story that makes us want to fistbump the whole interwebs and shout, “Fuck yeah humans!” Butthis is one of those stories. Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases. “This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS,” Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, told me. Khatib is the lead author of a research paper on the project, published today … Continue reading Winning the internet, all of it
http://www.kxan.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=6469 Every once in a long while, something goes right and victory gets pulled out of the jaws of defeat at the last minute. Yesterday was one of those times. After a protracted – and do I ever meanprotracted – up-and-down-back-and-forth battle with developers and their political allies, the acquisition of a critical 55-acre land parcel adjacent toJacob’s Well Natural Area wasfinalized yesterday by the Hays County Commissioners’ Court. A few months back, the acquisition seemed like a done deal. But political maneuvering as well as concerns of those fearful of county government involvement ground the whole process to a … Continue reading One for the good guys
It never fails. Just when I’m feeling completely cynical and bleak about the future of the country, of humanity — hell, of the whole planet — the intarwebz always manages to shake me out of it. ViaNerdist: So. To reinvigorate America’s waning interest in the space program, NASA has taken an inspired and admirable step; creating a freeware game called Moonbase Alpha where the player takes on the role of an astronaut working to resolve an emergency on a hypothetical moonbase in the not too distant future. However, in what amounts to the Internet equivalent of forgetting to convert to … Continue reading ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass!ass? ass!
Learn some goddamned geometry! So. Apparently, a bunch of fanatics in Saudi Arabia have decided thatGMT needs to be superceded by Arabia Standard Time. And what passes for logic with these guys is really, really appalling. Really, check this out. As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: “Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal.” According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show “Sharia and Life”, Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it … Continue reading Religious Nuts: They’re All Cut From The Same Cloth
A whooping crane in the wild is an astounding sight. If you’re lucky to be close enough to view one without binoculars, the first thing that strikes you is the size. An adult whooper stands 5 feet tall and has a wing span of 7.5 feet, blindingly white body plumage, black wingtips, a striking red and black mask, and large dark beak. They are magnificent animals and getting to watch them in their winter habitat atAransas National Wildlife Refuge, near where I grew up, made an indelible impression on me as a kid. Without a doubt, that’s one of the … Continue reading What will happen to them in October, BP?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640 Visit msnbc.com forbreaking news, world news, andnews about the economy Continue reading Sadly not real
After four decades, the Brown Pelican was taken off the endangered list last year. Pelicans currently nesting on Gulf Coast barrier islands are right in the bulls-eye for theoil spill as it drifts shoreward. Brown pelican, Caspian tern, royal tern, Sandwich tern, least tern, laughing gull, black skimmer, American oystercatcher, Wilson’s plover, snowy plover, reddish egret, roseate spoonbill, mottled duck, clapper rail, black rail, seaside sparrow, red-cockaded woodpecker, sandhill cranes, and all other species of plovers, sandpipers, ibises, herons, egrets, warblers, orioles, buntings, flycatchers, swallows, marsh-dwelling songbirds, ospreys, hawks, eagles. Those are just the birds. All other animals in the … Continue reading “Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.” *
I didn’t find out this was happening until about an hour beforehand, otherwise I would have been SO THERE: CHICAGO – SurvivingApollo 13 astronauts and severalflight directors reunited on Monday to remember a failed moon mission 40 years ago this week that they managed to turn into one of the greatest triumphs in the history of space exploration. Those who gathered included Apollo 13commander James Lovell, fellow crew memberFred Haise andNASA‘s legendaryflight director, Gene Kranz — all three of whom were immortalized in the 1995 movie “Apollo 13,” which starredTom Hanks as Lovell. “There’s truly a unique bond. There is … Continue reading They Got the Band Back Together
This interview with prominent ex-gayRichard Cohen is bound to get a lot of play in the coming weeks, and if you haven’t seen it, I gotta say it’s fairly epic. Maddow takes him apart. Watch his body language get twitchier by the minute. He definitelyneeds a hug by the end. Side note: Last night @maddow live-twitter denizens (think Crack Van on estrogen) were primed for this like a pay-for-view boxing match. Watching it as it aired, though, I felt myself getting weirdly uncomfortable as Maddow pressed on toward the takedown. Now, this might get taken out of context but bear … Continue reading “I’m reading it from your book, dude.”
When I was in my grad program, I started feeling pain in my groin. I didn’t remember doing anything stressful to it and it sure wasn’t due to an overabundance of sex. I had no real insurance to speak of, so I went to the student health center on campus, where I described my symptoms to the very nice man who was there to help me. He wrote down some things, looked up a few things on his computer and said, “It might be an infection or it might be a problem with your prostate. We’ll need to do an … Continue reading The Finger
First there was this: Five things that would make atheists seem nicer linked to byPZ, who of course quite gracefully pissed all over it: I especially appreciate the word “seem,” because Lord knows there’s nothing that could make usactually nice, and obviously we need the suggestions of a Christian, since we’re all such not-nice people. I should make a counter-list of “five things that would make Christians seem intelligent” That begatthis. All of which I can only reply to with this: And don’t missthis. Orthis. H/T toforgetomori for the post on TMBG’s newHere Comes Science. —– Continue reading Science is real. Just ask one of those nice atheists over there with the dinosaur bones
Fuck you. Hells yeah.Mosquito repellent improvement? Bring it on. You can thank the good people at the USDA for this–a mosquito repellent that, apparently, works better than DEET, and won’t mutate you into some kind of hideous monster. Cookouts will no longer end in B-grade tragedy. Now, why don’t we ever hear about this kind of government spending? When the Republicans start talking about “Bear DNA!!!11one!” and all of their brain-dead followers laugh along (It sounds kind of like this: Hur hur guh derf derf derf. It’s disturbing.), why doesn’t someone step the fuck up and say: Mosquito repellent, bitches. … Continue reading Science To The Rescue. Again.
I need your help folks. I supplicate myself to your experience and wisdom, particularly our friends from Lousiana. I seek your feedback for help dealing with a failure, of imagination, of technique, of logistics, I know not what else. Here’s my confession: I don’t know what I did with the gumbo recipe but I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. It was on a stained index card that I’d kept for 20 years, through moves between residences, crosscountry from south to east and back again. That’s really where things first went off the rails, was losing the recipe. It was … Continue reading Grave philosophical questions, or Having a Dark Night of the Gumbo