Get one of these ...
... for free, from Democracy for America (alt. link).
[Added] Sadly, these are not available.
But maybe if you write to Clay Bennett and ask really nicely ...
The above via the Center for American Progress, in an email inviting me to read an article titled, "The Legitimate Gripes of the Other 99 Percent/Amid the Cacophony of Protest Emerges a Coherent Set of Valid Complaints."
I love the idea that I’m “bullying” Rick Santorum, because all he wants to do is write anti-gay bigotry into the Constitution, prevent me from being at my partner’s bedside in a medical emergency, get in a time machine to prevent me from being able to adopt my son, reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Literally destroy my life. That's all he wants to do. And I made a joke at his expense. I’m the bad guy. And he’s the victim. All he wants to do is beat this to death. How dare we — tease him.
-- Dan Savage, via Dawn K. Johnson
(h/t for the RT: Jim Henley)
The schadenfreude fixes for New Yorkers just keep on coming.
... Jason Varitek, who had chastised a Globe reporter for calling him at home seeking comment for last week’s article, did a U-turn and entertained another Globe reporter at his house on Tuesday.
Also, the team owner never wanted that Carl Crawford, anyway, and one of the beer-drinkin' BUT NOT IN THE DUGOUT!!!1!, chicken-orderin', pitchers videogamers maintains this is All Francona's Fault.
Sigh. Denizens of the Sensible™ Center® like Mark Landler will be the death of us all.
But the increasingly caustic tone of the president’s attacks on Congress raises a question: How long can Mr. Obama continue to hammer Republicans without exhausting the patience of voters who elected him to be an alternative to Washington partisanship — and without risking the perception that he is part of the problem?
And how much a part of the problem are aging, very well compensated journamalists who sit around and write "analysis" pieces and then go out and find three vox pop quotes to support their preconceived notions?
He asked rhetorically.
A lecture from Freeman Dyson, about an hour long, that is a good review of the breakthroughs he's been a part of in his life, seasoned with his usual iconoclasm and sense of humor. If you weren't in Waterloo on 1 June 2011, you can join me in blaming Canada thanking the Perimeter Institute and TVO.
Republicans are the ones who have made faith part of the presidential test. Now we’ll see if Mitt can pass it.
-- Maureen Dowd
And how say you, Mr. Hitchens?
(h/t: TC and Carlos, via email)
There's an article in the StarTribune that you might have a look at. It describes a massive effort by Minnesota's Roman Catholic bishops to pass a law sanctioning discrimination.
Minnesota's Roman Catholic bishops are taking the unusual step of urging parish priests across the state to form committees to help get the proposed marriage amendment passed by voters in 2012.
"It is imperative that we marshal our resources to educate the faithful about the church's teachings on these matters, and to vigorously organize and support a grass-roots effort to get out the vote to support the passage of this amendment," Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt wrote in a letter to his priests dated Oct. 4.
The letter asks parish priests to "appoint a captain or co-chairs to lead a special parish ad hoc committee to spearhead this effort."
[...]
Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Catholic Church in Minnesota, said the state's other bishops are expected to send out similar letters, "if they haven't already done so."
"We believe it [marriage] is a vital social institution, and it's under attack in the courts, the Legislature and the culture," Adkins said. "And it would have profound consequences if marriage is in fact redefined. That's why we're putting extraordinary resources toward making sure this marriage amendment gets passed."
Emph. added.
And there was this, last year:
Minnesota's Catholic bishops made another unorthodox move before last fall's legislative elections when they mailed DVDs to nearly 400,000 Catholics across the state, with a message encouraging them to support a state amendment defining marriage between a man and woman.
Shoutout to Rev. Mike Tegeder, who …
... said he spoke up against the effort at a meeting of priests and the archbishop this week.
Tegeder, a frequent critic of Archbishop Nienstedt's policies, said he believes the letter calling for parishes to form committees to organize a get-out-the-vote effort is "imprudent" and "divisive."
"There's all kinds of wonderful ways to promote marriage, which I do on a regular basis and other churches are doing," he said. "You don't promote marriage by taking away the rights of a small segment of the population, many of whom are not Catholic or have no connection to the Catholic Church."
Emph. added.
If you'd like to kick in some bucks to help preserve equality and civil rights, Freedom to Marry invites you to click the button below. If you're a Roman Catholic parishioner in Minnesota, you might also think about the money you're giving to your church and where it's going.
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.
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
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.
... 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.)
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)
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.
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.
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):
(embiggen)
And here, via SkepticDoc, is a useful five-minute reminder from Skepchick, aka Rebecca Watson:
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.
... 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 …
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).
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)
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"
"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)
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).
Yes, this is what happens every time Ross talks about sex.
Watching Dan Savage make Ross squirm for an hour is pretty entertaining, though.
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)
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)
Now, if only we could get this hooked into the Submit button of every web forum.
Swiped from Geekosystem.
(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.
