ES!

Or is it “dept of Happyness?”
ES!

Curses, neuro! Foiled again!

FunnyD

Eureka!

BTW, did someone say on a thread yesterday or Saturday that Kiddo and Lahoma have left the Lake?
WTH?

FunnyD

I really fucking despise the bush administration.

lahoma pops on now and then. i miss them though

Obama Canpaign Silent on Purchase at Tiffany’s

Barack Obama’s campaign tossed around nearly $600 at Tiffany’s last month – for a trinket that remains a secret.

I understand he bought Hillary a lovely asterisk.

Hey hey ES

Amen, bro
And no, I don’t have to know any of them personally.
FunnyD

707!

ES! Hi, LL!

what happened, Wobbly? Did we get an influx of newbies/trollz?
FunnyD

betcha its a vase, or a sterling siver pen

Aloha CT!

Because it isn’t implied in my screen name, I’m a woman. But I agree with you I don’t have to know them either.

me too…that was teh sureal imo

Bhutan…
Now there’s a place I know absolutely nothing about.
*gets out atlas*

Let’s just chalk it up to a overly long primary race and primary fatigue by supporters. Emotions were running a bit high and maybe a full moon was involved

Good evening everyone. I know this youtube is silly, but I had to give the kids a prop for doing this at all.

My masochistic streak has returned and I am going to go finish watching Frontline.

Hey, I didn’t either. Placed a link to a map in the post. Click on Bhutan.

hell is too nice of a place for all these people that got us into this forsaken war.

*BLUSH*
WHops! Sorry, sistah.
Dang, didn’t this happen to someone in the last thread, too? (or was that at TBogg?). Geesh, feels like GroundhogDay.

FunnyD

hahahahahahaha
eye opener

What’s on my mind tonight?

Masters Of War

im still reeeeeeeeeling….its amazing the crazies got hold of the sanitarium

No worries, not like you can tell from name.

Wow, ES, you look rather debonair in your new pic…!

There seems to be no escaping it.

It’s the only pic I have ever used here..) thanks.

Time to get out of the water and hit the hay. Nighty nite pups…

Oh. That. Yes. nearly 8 years of mal-administration, and now a Dem slug-fest. Now you know why I’m mostly around at Late and Late Late Nite! Some skins seem to have become a bit thin–guess I’m just lucky my buttons haven’t been getting hammered on.

Hope it’s something time, margaritas and trail rides in the desert will soothe. It’s just not the same without Kiddo.

FunnyD

Late Late Nite OT

Folks will remember that I’ve been experimenting with an experimental Cardio-feedback device that I call ‘Gizmo.’ This week I figured out how to play the “Spectrum” game and the results were very interesting. Ya might wanna have a looky.

nite tbsa

nite,nite…me too

i just want to line them up and let the families of all these dead women and men at them..and for what? to feed a freepin ego?

‘Night, tbsISTa!
FunnyD

for dity filthy$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Heh, maybe that’s a testament to my powers of observation…! ;-)

dirty filthy…cant see,tired love yall to pieces,and peaces

i agree. they will be back but it wasn’t pleasant to witness and imho it is still a gaping wound (hard feelings)

boa noite sadly

Aloha, tbsa and sadly!

There you are!

Senator Clinton:

And also remember that pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.

http://www.attytood.com/2008/0…..are_1.html

Yeah. The tempers are very, very short at the moment during the day hours. I tread very carefully now and prefer to hang out here. Where i first spoke up.

On that note, i’m taking a bit of a break and heading off to read before i sleep. Just had to get my 2 cents in.

nite alias
primaries will be over soon

In other words, “Pay no attention to those voters behind the curtain!”

They are prying at every crevice.

Interesting.. I thought they were pledged, at least through the first round.

Oh, ES! Good song by the way. Simple and sweet, and the video was cleverly done.

Made me smile when I watched it.. The curmudgeonly fellow was a hoot.. I imagined he was the kids professor or some such.

Well, I’m glad I didn’t witness it, then. Had enough on my plate last week…no energy for extra aggro. Still, makes me sad, though. I didn’t/don’t always agree with the Kiddo, but, hell, one’s friends are only human. I know mine make plenty of allowances for _me_.

FunnyD

I believe she is correct. Similar to electors in the Electoral College, these people are given great leeway. I suppose this is to allow for emergencies.

‘night, alias!

Oof, my ISP crashed for a few. Hope my Masters Of War link made it through.

Yes, I am listening now.. Missed you last night. I posted a few folk band links you might have enjoyed.

ES, I should have said something earlier — caught up with that thread this morning over coffee, and it was delish! :-) And thank you…

Or to allow for the Real Villagers Who Know Best to save us from our silly selves?
Senator, Clinton, thanks for that info and, remember, that knife cuts both ways. At the rate you’re going, you’re lucky I’m an ALTERNATE delegate for you from my precinct to County/District on April 5th.

FunnyDiva
Still supporting the Democratic nominee in the General Election.

That was a great and fun spread of music last night, ES!
Highly recommended.

good way to look at it. folks forget that sometimes

Well you just made my day..) And it was a good day already.

My cat just caught a mouse.

Good nite, folks.

boa noite. neuro, pups

ES :-)

neuro, oh noes! Did the kitty leave the trophy where you could find it? They’re very proud of themselves when they do that.

nite neuro
so, there’s breakfast…

When my cat does that, he forgets/fails to kill it.

ES have you ever enjoyed slack key guitar, I’m watching George Winston play a marvelous slack key guitar, not bad for a pianist… here’s a sampling though it’s not George…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7rfm8Jnn6c

She tried to keep it to herself, but I relieved her of it. It was still alive, and I put it outside. It’s on its own from here on.

Once again, good nite.

Hope it was a Republican mouse!

Love to eat them mousies…
Mousies what I love to eat….

(h/t Kliban cats)

Aloha, neuro!

What makes a slack key? btw, the kid’s good.

neuro, I know you’re gone for the night, but I have to share this:

We had a cat many years ago (Sylvester) who proudly brought home a squirrel that he’d bagged. My ex-hubby tried to dispose of it in the nearby woods, but the kitteh kept bringing it back to us at the back door. Persistent little cuss…

They way they tune it, the strings are slack compared to the traditional tuning… It’s not easy to get it right, but, once it’s tuned it a thing of beauty…! *g*

Eureka Springs!!!

Senor!

They left and are back…They leave every once in a while…they’re also known for crying wolf…I suspect one of these days they’ll leave for good….

Oh Biodun, I hope not…Kiddo and Lahoma make me smile.

I coulda sworn Lahoma had popped in on an earlier thread today, it was brief…

kiddo and his one-line zingers make me smile too. But he sure infuriates lotsa people at FDL, and also gets into dustups with Jane and Christy over stupid little things…

CT, I saw that too, can’t remember when…

From the newsbox:

Climate change can be measured daily

AN Australian researcher says climate change could be measured on a daily basis, not just in the long term, by monitoring changes in coral.

Geoscientist with Brisbane’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Luke Nothdurft said coral was a good indicator of changes in water temperature over time and the rate of global warming.

But conventional measurement techniques studied coral in a similar way to a tree being examined for annual growth rings and this could lead to inaccuracies, Mr Nothdurft said.

A single colony of coral could grow for several hundred years, recording changes in concentrations of trace elements as sea temperatures rose and fell, he said.

Over the past five years, Mr Nothdurft has examined through a high-powered electron microscope coral samples from four common species found at Heron Island, in the southern Great Barrier Reef.

“The coral skeleton is much more complicated than the annual tree rings-type scenario that people have applied in the past,” Mr Nothdurft told AAP.

“With the techniques we are using, you can get down to daily resolution.

Biodun :-) IMO (and, I suspect yours) Kiddo and Lahoma speak truth to power…

she did pop up..as I said they’re back…for now, but last week they left for a few days after a dustup with Jane and Pach…

I’m a tad miffed, I still have to wait another hour for Frontline, but, it’ll be a 2 and 1/2 hour showing, so they won’t do a two-parter here in the Isles…!

Good night all, it’s late here in EDT-ville…thank you ES and everyone!

It was the long version here as well.

Rest well LL..

Corals can tell us amazing things:

One well known indicator of an old earth are the daily and yearly growth rings on rugose coral fossils. One group of fossils had been dated as 370 million years old, using radiometric analysis. Analysis of their growth rings indicated that there were about 425 days in each year when the coral was alive. This means that each day was only about 20.6 hours long when the coral was alive. As we go back in time, if we assume that the deceleration rate was constant at its present rate, a day would have shortened by about 11 microseconds each year. This would be 1.1 hours over 370 million years.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/oldearth1.htm

Aloha, LL!

nite LL

Whoa.. what a rant!

God Damn The Right

* By Chronically Pissed
* March 24, 2008

Far be it from me to defend a preacher, but the uproar over Jeremiah Wright is a shameful, cynical circus. His words are being condemned from the right with the worst kind of disingenuous indignation while the left pussies out again and allows the bastards to get away with it. Allow me to elucidate this mess…

The right-wing blowhards who are most upset about the scandalous YouTube clips they’ve watched are pretending to be deeply wounded by Wright’s perceived racial divisiveness. Never mind that they’ve never been within 30 miles of a black church; that they cannot even begin to place his words within anything resembling context; that they don’t know the first god damned thing about having racism directed at their people. None of this matters to them. They’ve found an opportunity to pounce and jubilantly announce that white people are the victims of bigotry too! See?!

Snip

Fascinating.. and horrifying to think changes/death can be measured daily.

Well, I’m fading here, too.
Goodnight, pups. Thanks for the company–and teh kitteh storeez.

FunnyD

nite diva

Aloha, FunnyD!

G’ nite FunnyD.

I did enjoy Abrams pointing out today, on his Teflon John segment, the hypocrisy of the media on the Hagee/McCain linkage vs. Wright/Obama…! It was refreshing to see!

I missed it.. Good to know Abrams has the ability in him somewhere.

Missed Abrams, seeing KO now – watching Senator Clinton “clarifying” her sniper-dodging episode.

I disagree with his sentiment that there is not one thing wrong with Pastor Wright’s message. It’s certainly true that there is nothing newsworthy about his comments, and it was a massive deception to take his words completely out of context. But Obama knows the man better than I do, and there are a few comments that are not correct. For example, I believe Wright has said that black men were given syphillis intentionally. Although the Tuskegee experiments were deeply immoral and wrong, the evidence is that people who already had syphillis were allowed to suffer.

bonne nuit….

Ron- thanks for that link. Tomorrow in class we finish watching the DVD of Lawrence Krauss’s speach at AEI “Science and Anti-Science”. One of my freshmen commented after what we have watched so far “wow, he’s really radical”. I have yet to figure out how to deal with that, bec. I don’t think he’s radical at all. He’s my kinda guy!

Agreed.. But I still loved the whole rant. The pastors words, especially the words highlighted by MSM, were far more spot on than not, imo.

Agreed.

I didn’t find Krauss radical, either! I considered him main-stream at best! *g*

Perhaps the confrontational setting makes him seem more “radical” to the students.

When I was young, I saw Carl Sagan on my TV saying that evolution definitely really happened. I was thrilled to see someone saying it so directly. It’s so sad that decades later it is still considered by some to be “radical”.

On the news tonight it was reported that the nature history museum in Denver
was trying to get rid of the religious crazies giving tours for school kids and saying the facts presented by the museum were not true. Cwazy rabbits.

Heh, what I did find radical was a snippet aired by ABC world news, they were touring the Creationist ‘Museum’, and this 8 yo girl was saying that there’s no way that we evolved from some asteroid… I really had to shake my head in sorrow…!

CT, Ron- I’m not sure where this student is coming from- I will have to figure that out. Fundie religionist? I will have to tease her out, and see what’s up.

Yep, I saw that, too. I saw it on the web somewhere.

Conservatives often talk about a decaying culture. They are the ones destroying it.

p.s. she is one of the most reliable students in my class, so maybe I can turn her around! ;)

There’s hope in dope! ;-)

She’s smart enough to find you.. and we know you like a challenge. *s*

My older son watched a Bill Moyers show last week, and told me about a lady on there who was “really radical.”
I was thinking Angela Davis, maybe?
Turns out it was Anne Lamott. ;)

:) These can be very emotional topics for some, so I don’t envy you. :) But it is important to try to let the students know that he is a completely mainstream scientist whose views represent the scientific community.

Anne is one of the more moderate one’s to appear on Moyer’s, maybe we’re the true radicals…!

Carl Sagan was radical for his times…

True, he caught a lot of flak!

Hmmm….

But Reid isn’t one for lengthy explanations. The conversation went like this:

Question: Do you still think the Democratic race can be resolved before the convention?

Reid: Easy.

Q: How is that?

Reid: It will be done.

Q: It just will?

Reid: Yep.

Q: Magically?

Reid: No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean (Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean) today. Things are being done.

That’s all the Nevada Democrat would say about it.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/16948521.html

Hilarious.

I love Anne Lamott.

Sorta like what a lot of the String Theorists are catching now…

His wife carried on his work…Anne Saroyan…

I do too! Did you read any of her books? Can’t remember the one I read, but I just loved her.

ha! Anne Lamott…Anne Saroyan…

Imagine what he would have thought of Susan Jacoby!

Lawrence Krauss is a fairly strong critic of string theory, by the way. He wrote a book about it. A number of scientists are saying it makes no testable predictions.

Sorta like what a lot of the String Theorists are catching now…

I love the String Theory. It makes me happy.

“Lawrence Krauss is a fairly strong critic of string theory, by the way. He wrote a book about it. A number of scientists are saying it makes no testable predictions.”

Hey, anyone need an economist? No testable predictions? No problem, then.

-actually I read it does make testable predictions, but totally infeasable to do over foreseeable future. It would take a substantial fraction of observable energy in the universe. I have no idea why that would be, but read it in a review of anti-string theory books, including the one by Krauss.

Hawkens was a disbeliever that now agrees with it, considering it answers both the micro and macro scales…

They think the new particle accelerator that’s about to come on line in France will prove or disprove some of the key underpinnings of string theory…

Good luck with your student, VG. My approach, when I have been teaching kids, both math and in Sunday School (no, not End Times Sunday school, but very liberal Sunday schoo) is that science is method, not a final set of beliefs or facts. But the method does make it very likely that some things we consider to be facts are very likely to be true.

That is too complicated for most under HS age I think. For jr high, has to be put differently. I’ve never dealt with younger kids. How old is the student, VG, if you are stil here?

Now that looks like a very interesting interview.
My sons have grown up in a small town and went to a fundamentalist church for a while, and boy were the messages they got at home different from the ones at church.

wes- this is a college fresh person.

Well, Shrub is talking, it’s my turn to view Frontline… I shall bid ya’ll a fond adieu! Aloha Oe!!!

Margot, it’s a stunning interview, and Jacoby is a completely fearless free-thinker.

I think it is true that several important theories were not really testable for quite awhile. Copernicus’ heliocentric theory I think is one. I think some of the assumptions behind Newton’s theory of gravitation was another -it got cred after people could use it to make predictions. Any others.

Oh, laissez faire neo-classical economics is another. no predictions yet either. One would think the clock would have run out on it by now. tick tick tick…

To probe smaller distances, it takes more energy. The scales of string theory are ginormously stupendously small (about .00000000000000000000000000000001 meters).

wes- this is a college fresh person.

thanks. I would give that line. Science is a method, not a set of final beliefs. But makes some things we consider facts to be almost certainly true.

But then maybe she meant poltically radical. Krauss was considered ‘radical’ by pissant cowardly administrators at a university in my neighborhood when people considered inviting him to speak.

Maybe it was the politcal tones not the science stuff.

maybe she mean ‘dude, he is so RADICAL! (that is, cool)

And, I responded to wes, b/c this was the last comment I read on thread.

BUT, I read all of the others before from all of you about this. Thanks so much. I will have to find out what “radical” means to a Fresh person. I said that a particular web site was really “clunky” and all they could get from that was shoes. So, there may be a vocabulary problem here as to “radical”.

And, I know nada about string theory, and can’t speak authoritatively about that in class, so please, don’t any of you sneak into class tomorrow and start grilling me about that!!! ;)

To probe smaller distances, it takes more energy. The scales of string theory are ginormously stupendously small (about .00000000000000000000000000000001 meters).

—

They’ll figure something out sooner or later. Way I figure it, keep pushing on that line until they get some better ideas. What are the alternatives? RonZuber, are you a physicist? What are the competing theories that explain the same stuff. I wondered about that after I read that review of the anti-string theory books.

Good luck with your student, VG. Mind me asking what kind of class this is? Philosphy, political science, what?

I have a Bachelors Degree in Physics, from a long time ago. :) My career is not in science. I believe the main competing theory is loop quantum gravity, which I know very little about.

wes- I’m a biology prof. college requirements are to teach Freshmen seminars. Mine this semester is “science and the citizen”. So, it’s a course based in the Bio dept, but it doesn’t get Bio credit for the major, but credit to the students for taking a required FS.

Way too late for me on the East Coast. Goodnight all.

Nite all. I really have to crash, but thanks for the great feedback. And, if I start babbling about string theory in class tomorrow, I blame FDL! ;)

babbling about string theory will make their day

nite valley girl

Good luck VG, and thanks for that link RonZuber, it looks interesting, and the math looks familiar! not totally advanced stuff I can never hope to understand.

nite rob
bailing here on the west coast – i can barely hang with you late easterners!

People are claiming that Hillary prefers McCain over Obama, since a McCain win would leave the door open for her to run again in 2012.

Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit http://books.google.com/books?…..#038;hl=en