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Rain, a bit of mulling over of things perhaps mullworthy, and an underground city
What do anonymity and the ease of commenting mean for the state of debate on the Internet? I mull this over all the time as the wake of commenting unspools behind my posts or some other blogger's. Certainly there's a pile-on effect–at DailyKos, people...Mars gets all Easter Island-y, sort of
I'm fascinated by pareidolia, the human ability to see order even when there is none, as manifested by seeing Jesus in your burrito and other such stuff. And largely with the aid of the Internet, a new world of such possibilities has opened up. You can find sites...Another year, another set of flying muttonchops
The World Beard and Moustache Championships have culminated in a fine set of awards. And I can only note that possessing fulminant facial hair seems to be accompanied by a very particular antiquarian dandy fashion sense. I also note with sadness the absence of Todd...Motoring to Motor City
The ten gallon hat will be hung upon a peg for the rest of the week while I motor to Motor City, but the nattering should re-ensue come next week.In the meantime, here are a few fun reads to enjoy. The first controllable nanotech gear has been created. Very cool. Now...Back from Detroit
And it was just as fascinating as that stretch of Hadley where all the big boxes have set up shop, only there was more of it. I always try to find things in a place that are unique to that place, and it's harder and harder to do. It feels as if either a) Americans...Weird in Wasilla
I'm not sure what's weirder–Sarah Palin's insanely strange resignation speech, or that, until the zoom-out, it looks as if Palin's speech is being witnessed by UFOs. Near as I can tell from that bramble of words, she resigned because of one or...Senator Smalley
What a long, strange trip it's been. But Senator Franken ought to add some drama to the proceedings once he gets his dander up–he's very good at calling the right wing on their methodology. I just hope he never wears the Smalley sweater into the...Turns out terrorism is still far too easy for people to accomplish, unfortunately
Today brings us two stark examples of what happens when you react to terrorism in the manner Bush & Co insisted upon. There are many more successful examples of combatting terrorism we could have followed–the UK, for instance, dealt with many years of IRA...The politics of scientists
A Pew survey has come up with the following very interesting numbers:The percentage of scientists who consider themselves Republican: 6("More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, compared with 35% of the public.") The percentage...Why you're brilliant (or, possibly, not)
Those goldanged scientists have discovered some very interesting things of late about heredity and the brain. Turns out it's far more complicated than people used to think, with genes being expressed or not according to which of the parents contributed what and...Webinating from each end
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo makes an interesting, if oversimplified, argument about the right wing's online presence: I'm often asked why the right doesn't have a muscular online news presence that mirrors the reporting-intensive, fact-heavy...Fly Me to the Moon
NASA's turn toward endlessly puttering around in low Earth orbit since the heady days of the moonshots irritates the kid in me. (It was, of course, 40 years ago today that Neil Armstrong did his lunar tarantella.) In the late 70s, many of us were drawing up plans...A Hole in the Head, a Hole in the Sky
Did they really find a daguerreotype of Phineas Gage, he of the giant railroad-spike-through-head caper? These folks claim it is so, and the photo does match Gage's life mask. He seems pretty stern about the whole thing in the picture.ADDITIONAL: Spaceweather.com...Full Beagle howl, cosmic coincidence
A UMass-Amherst doctoral candidate, Kathryn Lord, designed a study of dog barks. Some of the reporting that's coming from her study (but not this very interesting article) seems to be missing her point. She says that dogs don't bark to convey very specific...Those heady days of English 112
I taught Freshman English at UMass for several years as a grad student. Eventually I taught an Honors class, which was a real pleasure, almost like an upper-level course. Before that, I did have a few (well, 2) good students in those years. Never have I seen a more...Detonations of Fist-clenched Hope
Nicholson Baker, who will forever be canonized among my favorite writers for his short but absurdly, beautifully funny The Mezzanine, offers his thoughts on the Kindle, "an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization." This is a man who, for several...There's a fine line between clever and stupid. Well, sometimes.
Is Bill O'Reilly the dumbest person on television (stiff competition, I know)? The definitive answer here: How much cultural frisson can one human bear? That answer here, in which William Shatner performs Sarah Palin's farewell speech on Conan...They are very small ducks
My researches upon the Intertoobz have revealed to me a new and wonderful site. I give you Emails from Crazy People, and heartily suggest that, if you are in need of some comic relief on this rainy day, you examine this exchange between a tenant and a concerned...Moldavian dentist/lawyer still crazy
My favorite part of the awesome "birther" movement is its current lawyer-in-chief, Orly Taitz. Not only is her name suggestive of some sort of nebulous and non-specific foreign-ness, her accent and her look are a sort of amalgamation of the Gabor sisters and...Shutting down debate
Interesting to note that the ginned-up astroturf campaign to keep our awesome for-profit healthcare system (best in the world except for 36 better ones, including leading lights like Costa Rica, Andorra and Malta, said the World Health Organization a few years ago)...Aw-shucks theater
Those townhall disrupters–just reg'lar folk, out to raise their voices? I'm sure some of them are. Many of them appear to be frightened people who are old enough to oppose government in healthcare while participating in Medicare, the government...Some people are immune to cognitive dissonance
Maybe it makes them eligible to be fans of Schoenberg? That would be a worthwhile experiment.What I mean is, in St. Louis, the teabaggers contend, so-called "union thugs" assaulted a man named Kenneth Gladney who was there to protest healthcare reform. The...Thugs in the night
Josh Marshall introduces the hammer to the nail: The health care debate is now being driven by a perverse nonsense feedback loop in which the Palin/Limbaugh crowd says all sorts of completely insane lies, gets a lot of… how shall we put it, impressionable people...Whistleblower extraordinaire
Ah, what fun. Take an afternoon off, and the comment section gains orbital velocity, takes a couple of laps around Saturn and crashes into Titan. Better that than crickets, I suppose. At the risk of igniting more, I'll say this–to me, it's a simple...Hopfrog, or The Eight Chained Ourangoutangs now with Harmonicas
While the back, forth and further back of the healthcare situation continues to descend into something resembling an Ionesco play or a Bosch painting, the rest of the world continues to proffer interesting details. And, though I hate to abandon the amusing dynamite...Astroturfing for fun, profit and profit
It's not just the healthcare "debate" that's being flooded with activists who've been worked into a froth by the particular industry in danger of being reformed. The oil industry one-ups the health insurance gurus with a whole new level of...Just wondering
How many days after the inevitable "bipartisan compromise" will it be until the crazies start talking about the failure of the reform that got watered down to soothe all their twitching? ADDITIONAL: The Obama administration, whose record on civil liberties I...Talk About It
Obama in a radio interview today: "I guarantee you, Joe, we are going to get health care done."Uh-oh.As you can see way down below, this makes it personal. LAND O' GOSHEN:Will people arm themselves over health insurance profits? It's a good thing...When Majorities Attack
Nancy Pelosi seems to have figured out that a country that votes in Democratic majorities in both houses of congress and a Democratic president–get this–actually supports Democratic policies (It's a hard lesson for Democrats to learn): I agree with the...Cheney singes his pants again
Dick Cheney says torture worked. Now we have the (redacted) CIA memos which, he claimed, would prove his case. Only they don't prove his case. So now Cheney's language has changed. Now he says the people who were tortured provided good...The Gnostics were right after all
How about "we" hire a PR firm to make sure reporters embedded with the military offer fluffy coverage? I used to figure some plague or other would destroy the world, but I have to revise that. PR will destroy the world. The only reason the Bible says the...Are you concerned that the sky is definitely falling at 6 p.m. today (with extreme prejudice)?
Wonder where all the insane health care misinformation comes from? Well, at least one source is clearly identifiable: the Republican Party. Recently, the Republicans sent out a "survey" full of some of the most despicable push-polling questions I've ever...The Pentagon does the right thing
A few days ago, I took a look at a Stars and Stripes story detailing the Pentagon's hiring of a PR firm to gauge whether reporters embedded with the military had previously offered "positive" coverage: U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan...Cage match?
Sarah Palin has a great act she's put together. But lest we forget, she stands in the shadow of her predecessor, the original (and sadly, too often unsung) Lipstick Republican UberQueen of Comedy. Who would win a real showdown?Sarah Palin: “The America I...Northampton's finest tow away a wheelchair. Plus: health care troll bait!
Little matches the vein-popping frustration of a Noho parking ticket. I don't say Hamp, because these tickets seems particularly of the new Northampton. It's an awesome feeling to get a ticket in the fashion I last got one–I happily cruised on down the...Soapy
"Why do you trust the government?" has become a predominant question from tea party land in the town hall shouting matches.Pardon the soapbox, but, well, it's lying here, all dusty, the "Dove" on the side barely visible anymore.It is, when you...En vacances
For your viewing pleasure while I hang around on the ocean for a while: First, the transcendently wonderful/awful John Carpenter film Dark Star. Hang in till the music starts. In that scene, you can catch what, I'm convinced, is the genesis of a later incarnation...Going all Aquinas on 'em
Whatever you think of his personal foibles or political positions, Ted Kennedy, in an exclusive memoir excerpt at Talking Points Memo, exemplifies what it means to reach for the moniker "statesman" instead of merely "politician." Those in power who...Screw democracy, we've got guns
You've got to love Glenn Beck's capitalizing on 9/11 with his 9/12 Project, considering he said this in 2005:"You know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families. … I don't hate all of them. I hate about, probably...Why political parties are bad for your head
I think it's far better to remain true to one's ideals instead of one's party. Identifying too closely with a party can do weird things to your head, as was explored in this fascinating NYT article about the 1909 claims and counterclaims of competing...U.S.A., Inc.
Sonia Sotomayor's views, thank heavens, chip away at the foundations of the corporate state we all now enjoy. The Wall Street Journal reports on her recent comments in the current case regarding corporate rights and political campaigns. If the corporate view...I seen a UFO, Ma!
Just when you think you've finally seen the P-Funk mothership, it turns out to be something entirely different. I was walking my dog Saturday night when I looked up to see what I assumed was Jupiter shining through a cloud. Then I realized there were no clouds...Fun with your brain
Perhaps it's post-Grand Band Slam numbness (it's over for me, and now hitting the stands), but I can't quite re-enter the political fray just yet. So here's something purely for the psychological thrill of it. A little sort of experiment.First, count...Project Censored unleashes the info
Project Censored–the top 25 stories that we ought to know about, but which got swept under the rug by our corporate media types: Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010 Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street2. US Schools are More...You can have my Internet when you pry it from my typing hands
It's good to be back in the saddle. I'm still hacking and I sound terrible, but I'm back to moving dogies along. This flu business–I don't recommend it.And item one on the agenda is something I've been meaning to get to since before I got...The upside of swine flu
Because the doc says I have flu, and the CDC says 99% of flu right now is the swine version, I can with some unpleasant confidence say that, hooboy, I seem to have got the stuff! I'm happy to report that all seems well after 3 days (one of them an absolute...[Republican] Jesus [hates] me, this I know, for the [re-translated] Bible tells me so
Jesus, of course, was a Jewish hippie who preached peace, love, forgiveness and sharing of wealth. This is a major problem for bootstraps-loving free marketeers who are partial to the death penalty and marching off to war. At least that appears to be the (often...A reasonable health care compromise?
Is it safe to trust the new compromise on the health care public option? The Democrats in Congress are so often like Lucy with the football it's hard to know. Is there a non-silver lining to what appears to be a reasonable compromise?What I'm talking about is...ZOMG! The world is going to end (again)!
Re: 2012–I plan to clear out my Y2K bunker, slather myself with ham squeezins and do a Mayan rain dance. Unless this guy is right. But what does he know?–he's only a Mayan elder:Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions...Phsyics gone crazy
Are Higgs boson particles preventing their own creation? Two scientists have proposed that the Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator designed to smash things together and create ever-more-exotic subatomic particles to study, is being sabotaged from the...Sick of fancy sycophancy
It's a weird aspect of a career in arts criticism that you get, sometimes, heaps of criticism for your criticism. So one must needs acquire one of those little Goresque lockboxes. As a musician and a creative writer, I was/am used to critical reactions (both...Go ask Alice
An observation about the new industry-funded study saying health care insurance premiums will go up if we dare pass reform: this is perhaps more properly deemed a threat than a prediction. Premiums are, after all, set, just like any other price.They aren't...Lucy with football time?
TPM reports that Harry Reid is working the public option. One possible outcome of all of this health care wrangling, provided those reports are correct, is the creation of a public option despite the infinite well of objections of just the sort that can be seen in the...Atlantis found? (so far, no Ramtha)
A sunken Greek city, first discovered 40 years ago, is finally being surveyed with modern technology, and it's a very likely candidate, considering when the sea overran it, for being Homer's Atlantis. How cool is that? The site covers around 30,000 square...Perhaps they should have steeped longer?
According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, all the teabagging didn't work. At all. From the Post: On the issue that has been perhaps the most pronounced flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40...Will.he.was?
When I taught Freshman English, it was often comically obvious when a student plagiarized. Not 'cause I'm necessarily Mr. X-Ray Eyes or anything–I simply had people start everything in class by putting pen to paper, turn it in as a first draft and then...Beyond Deja Vu
Ever wondered if there's some way to quantify the subjective experience of time passing quickly or slowly? Here's a fascinating article about the experience of time and how it relates to the brain. It has some answers, and they're pretty cool. There's...Bush: A Slight Return
My hometown gets a load of Bush as motivational speaker. (Quotes below from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.)Bush confuses, understandably in his case, our economic system with our form of government. It does rather explain his pre-presidency statement “This is an...Best Health Care System in the World?
The beginning of an online exclusive at Vanity Fair called "The Sick Business of Health Care Profiteering": With median annual compensation of more than $12.4 million, C.E.O.’s at the big health-care companies make two-thirds more than their...E-Edition
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