A violent splinter group of Amish, specializing in forced haircuts, led by a guy named Mullet

Srsly.

Factoid of the Day

Of the more than 1,200 living billionaires in the world, he's one of only 19 who have donated at least $1 billion.

That from a piece about Jon Huntsman's father, not that it much matters to me. What I'm interested in is the general skinflint nature of the megarich, and even more so, why Forbes is suddenly engaging in class warfare!!!1!

That article also does not list the other good guys, but I went and found that list, because, as Charles Pierce probably never exactly said, I are a full-service blog.

(h/t: NYT)

P.S. If you come across the new home of Mr. Pierce's blog, I'd be grateful if you'd drop a note in the Comments.

P.P.S. Google Before You Ask Department: Looks like he left the Boston Globe to become the new HMFIC over at Esquire's political blog. That has long been a fine blog; I am sure he will only make it better, although I will miss his blog-commentary on sports. Also, according to gossip, this move stemmed from Charles having been disciplined by the Globe for having (elsewhere) once called Christine O'Donnell "a sideshow freak." If true, this does not say very much about the Globe's commitment to facts, although I suppose it's conceivable they slapped his wrist for being too polite about it.

Not feeling sorry for Huntsman

Much has been made of the hurdle he faces as a moderate in a primary system that rewards staunchly conservative views. Not enough has been made of how odd the definition of moderate has become. Huntsman opposes abortion rights. It’s not same-sex marriage he favors, just civil unions. Yes, he believes in climate change, but that doesn’t make him moderate. More like sentient. And when candidates at the Ames, Iowa, debate were asked if they’d accept a deficit reduction plan with $1 in tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts, he stood with the pack in saying no. Taxes were out of the question. Moderate? Only by the warped yardstick of these wacky days.
    -- Frank Bruni

Line of the Day: 2011-10-15

I blame the Internet for everything bad in my life, from back pain to global climate change. Not to mention shopping while intoxicated.
    -- Karen Olsson

Karen is the author of the fine article I just recommended on the Twitter. I had never heard of her, so I Googled her. The results look promising.

In case you missed my retweet ...

... this is truly wonderful:

cshperspectives Best, and most succinct, abstract ever? http://bit.ly/n4DawZ via @David_S_Bristol @bristoluni

(Via a whole chain of retweeters, ending with @carlzimmer.)

"It's hard to impress a movement that only knows what it is against."

Bill Keller's piece on what the teabaggers have done to the Republican Party, especially as it reflects in the comedy that is their 2012 presidential race, is worth a read.

The latter part is about Governor Goodhair, as that great and greatly missed Texan dubbed him. If you'd like more on that theme, I'd also recommend, following Keller, "We Read Rick Perry's 'Fed Up!' So You Don't Have To," from the Texas Tribune.

(h/t: KK, via email)

It's the personal touch that sells it

Screen shot of an email just in:

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Altruism? An instinct only about a billion years old.

Believe it or not, there's an article on slime molds that I'm going to recommend as utterly fascinating.

Well, it's by Carl Zimmer, so maybe that makes it less of a surprise. Anyway, here's a taste:

Slime molds first came to scientific fame in the mid-20th century with the work of the Princeton biologist John Tyler Bonner. Dr. Bonner learned of a North American species of slug-forming slime mold called Dictyostelium discoides and began to raise them in his lab, studying them as a simple analog of animal embryos.

Today, biologists no longer think of Dictyostelium as an embryo: It is more like a society of amoebas that come together for a common cause, for which some will sacrifice themselves.

The organisms respond to starvation by rushing together by the thousands into a single blob. The blob stretches out into a slug-shaped mass about one millimeter long (one twenty-fifth of an inch), which then crawls like a worm toward light.

Once it reaches the surface of the soil, the slug undergoes another transformation: Most of the cells turn into a stiff stalk, while the others crawl to the top and form a sticky ball of spores. They stick to the foot of an animal and travel to a hospitable place.

Inside the slug, about 1 percent of the amoebas turn into police. They crawl through the slug in search of infectious bacteria. When the amoebas find a pathogen, they devour it. These sentinels then drop away from the slug, taking the pathogen with it. They then die of the infection, while the slug remains healthy.

When the slug is ready to make a stalk, more amoebas must die so that others can live. They climb on top of one another and transform their insides into bundles of cellulose. Eighty percent of Dictyostelium cells die this way, allowing the survivors to climb up their lifeless bodies and become spores.

It also appears that slime molds are capable of recognizing their relatives, are good at making maps, and also act like humans when they're looking for food. Ooze on over to the rest.

Google's Sinister Plans: Caught on Video!

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This is actually a pretty good talk (set of talks), at least so far. The talk prior to the one pictured above indicates that the brute force approach to machine translation of text really seems to be paying off. (This is not to say that the Googlers have no smarts or cleverness by any means. In fact, it is quite encouraging to see someone get usable results by setting aside the perennial a-true-AI-is-just-around-the-corner approach.)

[Added] A bonus from watching the above video: At about the 42 minute mark, I learned a new word, and consequently, I am now able to state with confidence that doing quefrency alanysis and liftering on a cepstrum are operations no longer restricted to Dr. Spooner.

Goddammit. I forgot about Blasphemy Day.

Ah, well. Happy belated. And to celebrate, let's first have a painting by Dana Ellyn (because a bomb in a turban is sooo 2006):

Above: Jesus Does His Nails, by Dana Ellyn
(embiggen)

And here, via SkepticDoc, is a useful five-minute reminder from Skepchick, aka Rebecca Watson:

(alt. video link)

The full text of Robert G. Ingersoll's closing argument in the trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy, as mentioned by Rebecca in the video, is available with some scrolling at that link. Rebecca also refers us to the Center For Inquiry's page on Blasphemy Day.

I was led to Dana Ellyn's site by an article in USA Today after seeing what PZ Myers had to say:

Dana Ellyn has more works on this theme. Clickable thumbnails for the full collection are at the bottom of the page. Enjoy. I did.

[Added] You can also read four NYT articles from the time of the trial, published on 28 October 1886, 13 November 1886, 20 May 1887, and 21 May 1887, respectively. Note also the final paragraph from an article that ran a century later, reflecting on the event:

The New Jersey statute forbidding ''cursing, scoffing at or denying the existence of God or Jesus'' remained on the books until 1979. A criminal code revision finally made it legal to be as open about doubting the Lord as others are about believing in Him.

[Added2] Dana Ellyn graces us with a visit in Comments.

I thought this suggestive pose of a large-breasted ...

... chicken was a funny ad all by itself, but when I realized which famous bestiality-curious Republican was featured in the article on the same page …

(embiggen)

Santorum 2012!

Simple Harmonic Eye Candy

If you have two minutes, I think you'll find it well-spent by the end of this clip. Recommendation: After you click Play, click the full screen button (lower right corner, next to the YouTube logo).

(alt. video link)

Some discussion over on Harvard's Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations site, filed under Pendulum Waves. It is claimed that the first one of these cool things was built by Ernst Mach, in about 1867.

(h/t: KK, via email)

Line of the Day: 2011-09-22

Now, what I'm interested in is yet far beyond that scale. That's the so-called Planck scale, and what happens there. So that's really the scale of ten to the minus thirty-five meters.

You could also characterize it as the scale for which you can still apply for funding.
    -- Renate Loll, "on the Quantum Origins of Space and Time"

Least Surprising Headline Ever

Next to this, Dog Bites Man is a black swan.

You say that like it's a bad thing, Judge Posner

"Once all this stuff can be recorded, there's going to be a lot more of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers."

You mean, like this?

Mercy me, we wouldn't want anyone snooping into what the cops are doing, would we?

(pic. sources: Wikipedia and Brooklyn Bodega)

Great Moments in Baseball Commentating

I guarantee you, Sean, he might be thinking about taking a few pitches here.
    -- Rick Sutcliffe*

---

* Although he'll probably try to say it was Aaron Hill (Braves at Phils, ESPN, a few minutes ago).

Ross Douthat summed up in five seconds, by Ross Douthat

Yes, this is what happens every time Ross talks about sex.

Watching Dan Savage make Ross squirm for an hour is pretty entertaining, though.

I guess they all really do look alike

Baseball players, that is.

(source)

Well, hallelujah!

Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” …

(source)

Somewhere, Dunning just high-fived Kruger

I haven't been reading political news these days, for reasons too obvious to spell out, but I couldn't keep my eyes from straying across this blurb on the front page of the NYT:

Assumuing we're not talking about spewing bullshit with a straight face, wrecking the nation in the service of Koch interests, or impersonating jellyfish, the idea of members of Congress questioning anyone's competence …

Full article here, if you must.

(title: vide)

Best CAPTCHA Ever

Now, if only we could get this hooked into the Submit button of every web forum.

(embiggen)

Swiped from Geekosystem.

Headline of the Day*

(Assuming you didn't think the previous one was, I mean.)

Flickr’s 6 Billionth Photo is Classy, Somehow Not a Picture of a Cat

The post, which also contains links to the two, three, four, and five billionth photos, is worth a look.

---

* And I say this despite my view that all cat pictures are classy.

Sweet

Who knew a giant corporation could show taste?

Props for a promo

"Dread Pirate." Like.

1800

What ever happened to good teevee commercials?

These days it's all unshaven and apparently unshowered guys, wearing a cheap suit, trying to affect a 'tude by … putting their feet up on a table?

't'll kill ya.

Correcting the Corrector

In his latest round-up of mistakes in his own paper, the Grammar Führer at the NYT says:

HAMPTON, N.H. — For much of this year, Mitt Romney has laid low …

The expression is “to lie low,” so the perfect tense should be “has lain low.”

Given who we're talking about, the perfect way to put it would be “has lied.”

Oh, and besides Murdoch, is there any other news about powerful conservative institutions?

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Roman Catholic leader of Philadelphia, is expected to announce his retirement on Tuesday, some five months after the 1.5 million-member archdiocese was convulsed by evidence that officials had ignored sexual-abuse charges against dozens of currently active priests.

Oh yeah. It gets better. (For sufficiently weird definitions of "better.")

Cardinal Rigali, 76, who is planning to step down later this year, will be replaced by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver, 66, a Native American who is known for his aggressive public opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage …

It's almost hard to imagine how the Catholic Church could be losing membership.

Your Murdoch-owned Moment of Zen

Or, as Don Zeko puts it, "when you make James Fallows shrill, …"

Even if you thought your opinion of Fox and Friends couldn't get any lower, this'll astound you.

(previously)

__________

P.S. Bonus fun fact:

In the case of News America Marketing, its obscure but profitable in-store and newspaper insert marketing business, the News Corporation has paid out about $655 million to make embarrassing charges of corporate espionage and anticompetitive behavior go away.

And, from the same article:

News America was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in “The Untouchables” in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Emmel testified that Mr. Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy.

According to Mr. Emmel’s testimony, Mr. Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company’s philosophy — “bed-wetting liberals in particular was the description he used” Mr. Emmel testified — then he could arrange to have those employees “outplaced from the company.”

Eh, "was led," amirite? Surely that was in the past and this one of the proverbial few bad apples was long since shown the door by the esteemed Mr. Murdoch.

So what became of him? Mr. Carlucci, as it happens, became the publisher of The New York Post in 2005 and continues to serve as head of News America, which doesn’t exactly square with Mr. Murdoch’s recently stated desire to “absolutely establish our integrity in the eyes of the public.”

A representative for the News Corporation did not respond to a request for comment.

Never mind.

Remember when we were worried about Rupert Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal?

A nice apology from one of those who tut-tutted back then, Joe Nocera, who has finally come round to realizing that we were right to worry.

Sad that it had to be said, ...

... but good on Paul Krugman for saying it anyway.