An all electric car
Contentment.
Standing up for veggie gardening!
And, as always, Phila of Bouphonia's Friday hope blog.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Why finding a new fossil or kicking Pluto off the list of planets
Doesn't mean science is flawed. Just work in progress:
"Science is about changing ideas based on evidence, not about ignoring evidence to conform to our comfortable ideas."
"Science is about changing ideas based on evidence, not about ignoring evidence to conform to our comfortable ideas."
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Bits and bobs...
Sarcastic responses to signs.
What a president Al Gore would have made....
Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons
What a president Al Gore would have made....
Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons
Permaculture...
No photoshopping? How will beauty product corporations keep women buying crap to do the impossible?..a simple system for designing sustainable human settlements, restoring soil, planting year-round food landscapes, conserving water, redirecting the waste stream, forming more companionable communities...
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Watching the wonderful series called the Ascent of Man
by Jacob Bronowski. Standing in a concentration camp, Bronowski made a observation which applies today to those who wish to vilify science and education while insisting their religious viewpoints are absolute:
There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Friday, July 22, 2011
If cats reported the news
Take it away, Stripes!
His answer? Abstinence and Jesus work, ignore the data!
Dammit, who opened the catnip drawer?.... Snuffles, What do you have for us?
And from Fox News: Free Birth Control Is Liberal Conspiracy To ‘Eradicate The Poor’
Let's condense this here: No sex education, no birth control, and of course no abortions because women are hussies anyway....
Rep. Allen West would agree with that. Bill O'Reilly agrees with West. Dammed hussies! Maybe that's all they understand. Don't you agree, Socks?
Cinnamon reporting in: There are people out there who think The Onion is a true news organization...
How's Washington, Cinnamon?
Trying to scrape the debt crisis off on Obama won't work.
And it's tough to negotiate with crazy.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
No better than Argentina
America's Disappeared. Our very own concentration camps. Right here in the US. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money.
Al Gore saves the world
On September 14, Reality needs you.
Every day, millions of dollars are spent trying to convince you that climate change isn't real. Or that humans don't cause it. Or that the biggest polluters are trying to solve the problem.
But climate change is a reality. And big polluters -- drawing from the playbook used by the big tobacco companies years ago -- are trying to fool citizens and consumers around the globe by denying proven science. So how can we get the world to embrace reality? How can we share the truth about the climate crisis?
Meet The Climate Reality Project. On September 14, in a 24-hour event spanning the globe, we're introducing a brand-new organization with one clear goal: to bring the facts about the climate crisis into the mainstream by engaging everyone -- especially leaders like you -- in a conversation about how to solve it.
But enough talk for now. Former Vice President Al Gore helped create this video to explain where we are going. Watch it:
Friday, July 15, 2011
Blog sprinkles
Cambrian explosion!
Dumping 14 million bees on a highway... just think of what would have happened if they had been SUPER BEES!
Saving a humpback whale and getting a show.
Raising rabbits for food.
The difference between extreme weather and climate change.
Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) talks about the last 11 years of Harry Potter making....
Michele Bachmann and why we should stop sniggering and start paying attention to this batshit crazy woman.
29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Ramen!
An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".
Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.
Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.
The Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.
The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.
A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Be afraid!
Of them sneaky dark skinned people who are lawless because of a black president. Or something. Anything for you to vote Republican.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Weirdness and wizards
The Guardian liked the last Harry Potter movie.
Neptune celebrates first anniversary on July 12, 2011
Haboob!! (The video is silent but astonishing)
Neptune celebrates first anniversary on July 12, 2011
On Tuesday, July 12, 2011, the planet Neptune completes its first revolution around the sun since its discovery on September 23, 1846. Neptune finally reaches this milestone at 22:27 Universal Time today. It takes Neptune 164.79 Earth-years to go full circle through the constellations of the Zodiac, whereas the Earth goes full circle in just 365.256 days.Russian trilobites.
And speaking of fossilized brains...
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) became the first presidential candidate to sign a pledge created by The Family Leader, a conservative, Iowa-based Christian group that opposes same sex marriage, Sharia law and pornography.By signing the pledge (PDF), Bachmann vowed to support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, as well as agreeing that same sex marriage was akin to polygamy.The document also implies that homosexuality is a choice.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
I think I prefer living nowadays...
Megafauna are thought to have evolved to such large sizes to cope with inhospitable climates and food scarcity, with fossils found in Australia of prehistoric emus, tree-dwelling crocodiles and carnivorous kangaroos.This from an article about finding the fossil of a 'Mega-Wombat'...
The fossil of a car sized mega-wombat has been unearthed in northern Australia, scientists said Wednesday -- the most complete skeleton of its kind.I think the tree climbing crocs are the scariest. Would have taken care of this guy in a second:
Weighing in at a whopping three tonnes, the herbivorous diprotodon was the largest marsupial to ever roam the earth and lived between two million and 50,000 years ago.
Australian man spends 6 days up a tree to escape crocodiles
Monday, July 04, 2011
5 Reasons The Founding Fathers Were Kind Of Dicks
History is not always what you think it should be...
Happy Fourth of July
May the only rockets' red glare you ever experience be in the night sky above the city park...
Maybe we need an axe, too?
Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly:
But it’s the “they don’t want compromise” line that really stands out. From McCain’s bizarre perspective, Americans simply want Democrats to accept the Republicans’ unpopular agenda — all of it — and see no need for compromise between the parties.It’s a reminder about the extent to which the parties are approaching this process very differently. Democrats believe it’s a negotiation, and both sides will make concessions to reach an equitable agreement. Republicans believe it’s a transaction, and Democrats must simply give the GOP what it demands.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
What? There are people who won't eat genetically modified vegetables?
A Bayer AG (BAYN) unit agreed to a $750 million settlement resolving claims with about 11,000 U.S. farmers who said a strain of the company’s genetically modified rice tainted crops and ruined their export value.h/t to Mike Goldman in Facebook.
The settlement, announced yesterday, ends scores of lawsuits filed against the Bayer CropScience unit of the Leverkusen, Germany-based company by farmers in Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said in August 2006 that trace amounts of the company’s experimental LibertyLink strain were found in U.S. long-grain rice. Within four days, declining rice futures cost U.S. growers about $150 million, according to a complaint filed by the farmers. News of the contamination caused futures prices to fall about 14 percent.
“From the outset of this litigation, we made it clear to Bayer that the company needed to step up and take responsibility for damaging American rice farmers with its unapproved rice seeds,” Adam Levitt, a plaintiffs’ lawyer, said yesterday in a statement. “This excellent settlement goes a long way toward achieving that goal.”
Bayer confirmed the settlement in its own press statement minutes later.
“Although Bayer CropScience believes it acted responsibly in the handling of its biotech rice, the company considers it important to resolve the litigation so that it can move forward focused on its fundamental mission of providing innovative solutions to modern agriculture,” Greg Coffey, a spokesman for the company, said in the statement.
I bet if they proved
That Monsanto's Roundup caused the miscarriage, they would back off. Corporate rights rule even over the sanctified fetus...
Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Criminal Charges In Mississippi, Alabama
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Maybe they just LIKE things broken...
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:
Republicans got the tax cuts they wanted. They got the financial deregulation they wanted. They got the wars they wanted. They got the unfunded spending increases they wanted. And the results were completely, unrelentingly disastrous. A decade of sluggish growth and near-zero wage increases. A massive housing bubble. Trillions of dollars in war spending and thousands of American lives lost. A financial collapse. A soaring long-term deficit. Sky-high unemployment. All on their watch and all due to policies they eagerly supported. And worse: ever since the predictable results of their recklessness came crashing down, they've rabidly and nearly unanimously opposed every single attempt to dig ourselves out of the hole they created for us.
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