02 November 2005

Lisa Marie Presley can sing? Who knew!

WOW! Like, so wow. I am watching Lisa Marie Presley sing on Ellen right now ... some re-run while changing channels and, by blog, the woman has one of the sultriest voices to have tickled my ears since Chrissie Hynde and Cher. I actually like her. WOW! It's a deep, smoky rock 'n rolling voice like you don't get these days with the new crop of soprano freaks. WOW! I do like her voice ... have no idea what the song was about but that voice. Loving it!
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31 October 2005

It's one in 5 million

Go read My Other Vagina - And other news from science and technology. By William Saletan Who knew there are women born with two vaginas and wombs?
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I am theory slut

I guess my decision not to go with the strap-on dildo made all the world of difference.
You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the
postmodernists, you collect avant-garde
Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal
articles for breakfast. You positively live
for theory. It really doesn't matter what
kind, as long as the words are big and the
paragraph breaks few and far between.

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla ...[more]
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28 October 2005

Andrew Card, psycophant

This article by John Fund of The Wall Street Journal explains A LOT :

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail || Another reason for conservative suspicion is that it was Mr. Card, a former moderate Massachusetts state legislator, who pushed the Miers choice. "This is something that Andy and the president cooked up," a White House adviser told Time magazine. "Andy knew it would appeal to the president because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Conservatives still recall that in the White House of the first President Bush, Mr. Card was deputy chief of staff to Mr. Sununu, the prime backer of Judge Souter. Mr. Card told me on Friday that "it would be a complete exaggeration to say I played a role in the Souter selection. I merely supported his nomination as I did all presidential appointments."

Colin Powell : Presidential pooper scooper

The White House cabal - Los Angeles Times || The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did --everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
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27 October 2005

The MAHABLOG does The Swan

The The Mahablog has a new face and it looks 20 blogs younger. Growwwwwl! Then again, Rox Populi gets botoxed like every 15-20 days. That blog's face is just looking skeletal these days ... heh.
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24 October 2005

This is just cool!

I've always had an interest in the creation/evolution wars. They've been heating up again, what with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District being argued in court the past few weeks. While I started reading sites like PZ Meyer's Pharyngula (I also like this because it's from Minnesota), Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars and the group blog The Panda's Thumb for news about the ID movement and Right-Wing attacks on biology (and to get news about Kitzmiller; the ACLU of Pennsylvania has set up an indispensable blog with resources on the trial), I've also found myself reading about things that make me say, "That's really cool!" I've been learning stuff, and it's fun. A post today by PZ Meyers gave me that "Cool!" feeling. It's about the evolution of insect wings from gills:

The question is how insect wings evolved. Wings are a classic issue in evolution, because they aren't going to function for flight at all until they've achieved a certain minimal size—half a wing isn't any good at all for getting an animal in the air, so any explanation for their selective evolution has to incorporate alternative functions: as stabilizers for cursorial animals, for instance, or traps for catching small prey on the run. In insects, we have an interesting origin explanation for wings: they're modified gills. It makes sense. For gills, you want to have an increased surface area for gas exchange, and you want them exposed to the external environment. Most animals evolved sophisticated gills with convoluted surfaces and tucked them away in a protective chamber, with a mechanism to pump water over them, but others took a simpler path. Mayflies, for instance, have flat vanes on each segment in the larval stage as respiratory surfaces—they even look like wings. Arthropods evolved a recipe for flat, cuticular structures to serve as gills, and perhaps one explanation for the evolution of wings is that they simply re-evoked that recipe as adults, used it for gliding, and then expanded and elaborated on the formula incrementally to generate flapping, powered flight.

Just go read the whole post. It's quite fascinating for people like me who have some background in the "hard" sciences but now work in the social sciences, including doing some of that nasty PoMo Social Studies of Science stuff (we can talk about that another time). I just like things like this that teach me something I didn't know before. (No, I didn't take biology in college, but I had more than my share of chemistry and physics.)
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Another Reason Not to Move to Idaho

Lewiston, Idaho investigators believe that 70 percent of the rape victims they interview are lying. The original story was in the Lewiston paper, which only allows access to its online stories to print subscribers, so I can't comment on what would possess these men to make such a fucked-up assertion, but for whatever reason, these police officers, charged with protecting the women in their community, have opted to demonize them as liars. I'm assuming that their supervising officer will be demanding their badges. In the meantime, despite the spectacular natural beauty of Idaho, I'd advise women to avoid the state all together. Call it a girlcott.
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21 October 2005

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has a website

The US Department of Justice, Office of Special Counsel has one of those typical government websites that would make Jakob Nielsen go into web standards fits and usability conniptions --the whole damn thing is just a repository of PDF files. YUCK! Still, given the smearing campaign the Bushites have been waging against him and his office, I find it interesting that the site suddenly appeared this week. It seems that, indeed, the OSC is fixing for a long-winded Fitzmas season.
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To all the Libra's in my life, Happy [belated or coming] Birthday!

The only two birthdays I never forget are my kids because they hurt. A lot. So I spend quite a number of days paying penance for the b-day infractions I commit each year. October is a big birthday month for me. Being the air-head Gemini that I am, I happen to be a Libra magnet. So to Mr. Man and my friends Barby, Hannah and Ishe : HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do not believe in the existence of a god but I do believe there is something to astrology. So sue me. I know I am forgetting people, so if you are reading this and you ought to be in this list, let me know! In the new culturekitchen site, users will be able to not only add their birthday to their profiles but put it up on the calendar of events as well. Cool, isnt it? Oh, dear, I almost forgot my imaginary boyfriend, Viggo! Happy Belated Birthday Mr. Mortensen.
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13 October 2005

I can't believe I have to say this

I can't even remember when it was because I've been so busy trying to set up this site in the new server, but sometime this week or last I was approached by a group of purple wavers to sit in on a conference about some project that is supposed to be about making the best thing since bottled beer or something like that. ...[more]
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11 October 2005

Harriet Miers, meet The Aristocrats

OK, so I absolutely loved the movie, The Aristocrats. It really demonstrated how a talented comedian can take a standard joke and make it their own. I didn't see it as an investigation of a joke so much as a demonstration of the skills and craft of good comedy. Sarah Silverman rocked my world in that film, and it looks like Harriet Miers has joined the family. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Catallarchy):

Harriet Miers walks into the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings. Arlen Specter asks her, “Ms. Miers, how would you describe your approach to interpreting the Constitution?” Miers, visibly excited, says, “I’m glad you asked. My approach is really quite interesting. I think you’ll like it.” “Well then,” Specter says. “Let’s hear it.” Miers launches into an explanation: “Well, first thing I do is find a fairly quiet room with a clean desk. I put the Constitution on one side of the desk, and a Bible on the other. I then completely disrobe, as to be completely unfettered for the job at hand.” “Uh, Ms. Miers, I’m not sure that—” “I then take the Constitution and stick it all the way up my ass. This is fairly difficult, because I like to use a large, leather-bound version, but I’ve gotten much better at it. It’s usually just the gold-plated index tabs that hurt.” ...[more]
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21 September 2005

Delurking Day

Apparently, today is "Delurking Day" (via