Blog of the Day: Estavisti

From Estavisti, lots of goodies today.

First, from here, an interesting map of the USA according to the predominant ancestry - county-by-county.

Also, a good resource with English translations of newspapers from the ex-Yugoslavia.

Finally, an intriguing post about the politics of script: to this day, after almost 15 years in the USA, I still sign my name in Cyrillic sript!

But, I don't check sports scores online

Echidne is on the roll. This and this may help you make more sense of the recent study on the supposed gender differences in the Internet use. She examines the study itself, as well as the way it was reported in the media. The obligatory read of the day.

Podcasting in the local news

In this week's Independent, Brian Russell has a step-by-step yes-you-can-do-this-at-home introduction to podcasting: DIY radio: Or how I learned to stop worrying about the media and start podcasting. Worth a read.

Also, if you can, show up next week (Saturday, January 7th) at the Podcastercon that Brian (with a little help some others) is organizing. Check the Podcastercon Wiki and the blog. I'll be there.

Welcome to the neighborhood

Don't know how Ed discovered it, but this new blog written by a Greensboro cop is delightful! It's called Bobbysitter and will make you think differently about a lot of stuff....

Tagged by Countess:

Four jobs you've had in your life: Horse trainer and riding instructor; assistant handicapper and finish-line judge at the Belgrade Racecourse; translator of Disney comic strips into Serbo-Croatian; biology instructor/researcher.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Fiddler on the Roof, AristoCats, Charlotte's Web, Hair.

Four places you've lived: Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Raleigh, Cary and Chapel Hill (all three in North Carolina)

Four TV shows you love to watch: They were all cancelled long ago (My so-called life, Police Squad, Black Adder...), also Democratic Primary debates on C-span.... so the TV's been off for a long time now.

Four places you've been on vacation: all over the Adriatic Coast; Stockholm, Sweden; Brighton, Bath, London, Oxford and Droxford, UK; Wrightsville Beach, NC; Amelia Island, FL; Kiawah, SC.

Four websites you visit daily: Pharyngula, Pandagon, Shakespeare's Sister, EdCone...and many more, never just four - they are all blogs as I quit doing other kinds of websites....(I should have put Sitemeter....)

Four of your favorite foods: anything brown (implying: chocolate), anything Italian, anything from my mother's kitchen, copious amounts of roasted meat.

Four places you'd rather be: anywhere in New Zealand; Barcelona, Spain; Jerusalem, Israel; Hedonism III.

Four albums you can't live without: Greatest Hits (or collected everything): Janice Joplin, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Djordje Balasevic.

I tag the following four people to do this meme:

Archy
Bill
Jim
Buridan's Ass

Carnival of the Liberals - second call for submissions

The next edition of the Carnival of the Liberals will be held right here at Science And Politics on Jan. 4th, 2006.

Read the submission guidelines carefully as this carnival, unlike most other carnivals, is actually edited (I think only Blawg Review, out of more than 160 carnivals in existence, is also edited/peer-reviewed). Thus, out of 30-40 entries, only ten are chosen by the host.

Each week there is a new host with a new taste and a new criterion, so if your entry does not get accepted one time, just keep trying, and you'll get in sooner or later. Also, be assured that Big Dogs certainly have no advantage over less well known blogs here.

While individual hosts will differ on details, participants are generally encouraged to send in original thoughts, new creative angles, or expert analysis, as such will be likely to be valued higher than simple reiterations of what others said, links-and-quotes, or angry rants. Although, a really, really funny rant may be an exception, and if I get something that makes me spit my Coke with laughter, you have a shot at a spot (but send me a bottle of monitor-cleaning solution first).

Send your best post by January 3rd, 2006 by 5pm EST to make sure it’s considered for CotL #3. You can submit your entries by using the automated submission form, or by e-mailing me directly at Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.

If you are interested in hosting a future edition of CotL, check here (and here) to see what it entails, then you can volunteer here.

Weeeeelll, not really....

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

Link-Love: Miscellaneous Thursday Blogaround

Anonymoses writes: "What is needed is that conservatives learn their proper role." Read the rest.

Buridan's Ass on people who feel entitled.

Somehow, these days, Amanda and Shakespeare's Sister tend to write on same topics - this time, on changing sex-ratios in higher education. Both are very thoughtful posts.

Comandante Agi thinks that sexual intercourse can be a good metaphor for international relations.

Tom Hilton, Arthur and Thesaurus Rex are starting a War on Anti-Intellectualism.

Publius uses a sexual selection metaphor to explain the nominations of wingnut judges. I added my 2c in the comments.

Is America an empire? Perhaps.

Rev. Billy Bob Gisher is irreverently sarcastic in a two-parter about causes of death Part I and Part II.

PZ gets exercised by an exorcist.

Archy on market-tested justifications for Bush's illegal wiretapping and spying.

Asses. Female. Do I look fat in this?

AE found a study that confirms that fear of death may factor into who we vote for, i.e., that people were scared into voting for Bush.

Listen to the song: We Come From Monkeys!

Echidne on tolerance.

Speaking of tolerance, Coralius of Revolvo Inritus wrote a Letter To The Editor of SciAm about atheism. It's chilling, what he says about the labmate.

Speaking of Intelligent Design, it can be taught intelligently, in a philosophy college class.

Another New Carnival

The first issue of KGB (Kansas Guild of Bloggers) is up on Bloggin' Outloud.

I love the way regional carnivals are sprouting everywhere! Check the other 170 ongoing carnivals here.

Update: there is a second edition already.

Carnival of Harry Potter

The inaugural edition of the Carnival of Harry Potter is up on The Pensieve.

The image courtesy of Marta.

Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions

We have a brand new host for the Tar Heel Tavern this week. Send your entries to The View From The Cheap Seats, at
tbojustin AT yahoo DOT com

Little Red Riding Hood, here I come!

Carnival of Education

Carnival of Education #47 is up on Education Wonks.

JesusPet

An easy way to get a nice pet for free. But you'll have to wait until the Rapture takes the owners away.

Link Smorgasbord

PZ Myers and Colin wrote the saddest and nicest posts about Christmas.

And Colin ads a second part to his.

Bill's is sweet, though.

Buridan's Ass busts the myth of a Christian nation.

Hedwig on what we know about the tsunami a year later.

Dolphin mothers pass tool use on to their female offspring and how (not) to write chick lit, from Melinama.

The Real War on Christmas, via Brett, who still practices the forgotten art of patience.

Everybody is doing 4x4 and 7x7 memes these days, but Lance is having real fun with it.

Kim has seen her share of miracles.

Chris Mooney got voted one of ten 'sexiest geeks' of 2005 by Wired mag.

The world actually is more peaceful today than in the past, says David.

Carl on the other Panda's thumb.

Is American Idol going to be won by a North Carolinian? Again? It's possible.

Shakespeare's Sister on The Sanctity of Mail Order Marriage.

Amanda on the same topic and muses some more on the disappearance of the 'traditional' family.

What would Einstein teach?

Publius: originalists don’t care about terrorism and aid and abet our enemies.

If you have a hammer, everything is a nail. So, travelling on an airplane is sufficient inspiration to write about Kant and scientific ethics.

Kung Fu Science, via Skepsisfera.

How to draw a really good mammoth. Also, Friday Cat Blogging will never be the same again.

Radiation monitoring without a search warrant.

Leah Penn is vending.

So, what do YOU do?

I was young once and had tons of energy, too.

I need to join her.

The Origins of Music: Innateness, Uniqueness, and Evolution from a class taught by Scott.

Dangerous Workplace

These guys should be hired by OSHA! Can you imagine the regulation they'd come up with? There is NOTHING that cannot be a danger to life and limb.

There's a lot of power in a good cow!

Norwegian cops are strong, but even they could not tip a cow. That was a native cow. Actually, a nativity cow. She was running for her life. I don't blame her. I'd run, too.

Grand Rounds

Year-End Grand Rounds is up on The Health Care Blog.

Science News

* Dwarfs got respect in ancient Egypt, research suggests:
A new study examines the role of short people in the kingdom of the Nile.

* Language affects thought -- in just half the brain, study finds:
Scientists and philosophers have wondered whether each person's language influences how he or she sees the world.

* Wanted: amateur stargazers
Backyard astronomers with relatively big telescopes may be able to help researchers investigate bursting stars.

* Shorter glasses lead to bigger drinks: study
People tend to pour more into short, wide glasses than into tall, narrow ones, research has found.

Essential Science Fiction

A couple of months ago, Brandon (of Siris) wrote a post in which he listed twenty must-read science fiction novels. Please read the comments where many people add their own suggestions. I am not exactly sure what the criterion was - the best ever, Brandon's personal favourites, or something else - but ever since, I wanted to write a similar post. Not that I disagree much with his choices - I don't - but I just wanted to make my own list.

I grew up on science-fiction, in Serbo-Croatian translations at first. Yugoslavia was always a big hub of SF fandom and many books were translated. I devoured books by Bjazic and Furtinger. I was fortunate enough to grow up during the 13-year tenure of Sirius, a fantastic monthly magazine emulating Asimov's. I still remember the cover story of issue #2 - 'Mewhu's Jet' by Theodore Sturgeon (after which I call my cat Mewhu).

I am not going to limit this to just 20. I am also not going to limit it to just one book per author. I will not even limit it just to novels - some of the best SF is in the form of short stories. In some ways, this is a "Best of" list, in others it is a "My favourites" list.

The way I made it was to think what books I would buy for a young person (let's say a niece or nephew going off to college) as an introduction to SF - in other words: where to start when entering this genre. Another way I thought was to think of a long list of SF works that can be used (once pared down to a managable size) in teaching a course "Science Fiction for Biologists."

As my brother says, and I wholeheartedly agree, it is a sacred duty of all scientists to read science fiction, not just for research ideas, but also because all societal and ethical consequences have been explored by SF writers long before any federal ethics committee ever got assigned to think about it. So, here it is:

Let's start with the pioneers, of course, then progress more or less chronologically.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is my favourite by Jules Verne. I have read quite a lot by him (mostly when I was a kid), but this is the only one I went back to and re-read it a few more times. I'd also like to read his newly-discovered novel about Paris.

H.G. Wells is tough to choose from. The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau are the novels I liked the best, but it is his collection of stories, The Stolen Bacillus And Other Incidents, that I think is his best work by far. There are many different collections of his stories, but try to get the most complete one, like the one I linked to.

The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley is a classic that rarely makes its appearance on Best-of lists. Do not get the abridged (American) edition as they cut out the best parts, afraid of insulting local Puritan sensibilities. For an evo-devo biologist, this book is a must!

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is undoubtedly a classic. Read it online.

Edgar Rice Burroughs. Well, of course, Tarzan is great fun and I have read many of those. The Mars novels are also cool. The Land That Time Forgot is everyone's favourite. But I want to point you to a less-well known series of his, the Pellucidar series, which happens inside a hollow Earth (and has its effects on circadian rhythms and perception of time - so it really makes it cool for me). At the Earth's Core, Pellucidar and Tanar of Pellucidar are the first three in the series (wich apparently can also be found bound together). The remaining four are Tarzan at the Earth's Core, Back to the Stone Age, Land of Terror and Savage Pellucidar. I have not read them but I am very curious. These are cheap paperbacks, so if you are in a cheritable mood, I have placed them on my wish list.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Of course. (also found online).

English-speaking list-makers tend to focus only on works originally written in English. But there is a lot of good stuff that one can find in translation. The best and most influential of the early Russian SF is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

A list of SF classics cannot omit RUR by the Czech writer Karel Capek, a SF play that gave us the word "robot". Personally, I prefer hisWar With the Newts. When I first read it as a kid, I loved the beginning and the end, where all the action is. When I read it again as an adult, I loved the middle part where there is a lot of science and philosophy. Another must for evo-devo folks, too.

Alexander Belayev is probably the best known SF author from the old USSR. He was definitely the most prolific. Some of his stuff is horrendous - peans to the invincibility of the Soviet Man (I guess he had to write such things to keep himself on the good side of authorities) - but other stuff is great. Unfortunately, much of his stuff has not been translated into English (I read them in Serbo-Croatian translation). My own favourite, by far, is The Amphibian, another must-read for evo-devo biologists. I'd like to read it in English translation one day, too.

Solaris is supposed to be the best novel by Stanislaw Lem. I disagree. Tarkovsky's movie version is better than the book. I have not seen the Clooney version yet. If you want to read a really amazingly good novel by Lem, pick up The Invincible. On the other hand, you will laugh out loud at the adventure of Ijon Tichy, especially in the first book in the trilogy, The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy. It is followed by Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences Of Ijon Tichy and Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy. I think a reviewer on Amazon nailed it: "If Borges had written "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," it might have resembled "The Star Diaries.""

The Titan of Space by Yves Dermez was fun to read when I was a kid. I have no idea if it exists in English, though.

Another fond memory from shildhood is Planet of the Dreamers by John MacDonald.

Olaf Stapledon is really hard to pick from. I have not read Odd John. His magnum opus is the duo of The First And Last Man and Star Maker, but my personal favourite is Sirius.

It is funny how in 1984 people laughed and said that George Orwell's novel 1984 completely missed on all its predictions. The only thing George got wrong was the title. He should have placed it another 20 years into the future and be right on the spot. Healthy Forests. Patriot Act. Tax Relief. Intelligent Design. Strict Construction. No Child Left Behind. Tort Reform. War On Terror. Activist Judges. Sound Science. Fair and Balanced. War On Eurasia. Black is White.... If anything, George was not creative enough.

But George was not alone. Aldous Huxley also got a lot of stuff right in the Brave New World. Again, twenty years ago people said he got it all wrong but those same people have to eat their words today. My personal favourite of Huxley's work is After Many A Summer Dies A Swan (ah, yet another must-read for the evo-devo crowd). Has anyone read Ape and Essence? Is it any good?

The one anti-utopian SF novel that got it most right of all of them is Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and Cyril Cornbluth. Decades later, Pohl wrote an excellent follow-up novel, The War of the Merchants. Follow the money, as Rush Limbaugh would say. Speaking of Pohl, his Gateway series is worth checking out (at least try the very fist in the series).

While we are still in these dark areas, probably the darkest is The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, an alternative history in which WWII is won by the Axis. Dick is one of my favourite authors and it is hard to pick just one novel as the best. Ubik is excellent. I also liked The Man Who Japed and Counter-Clock World. Also, his Galactic Pot-Healer is refreshingly different, funnier than usual and almost a fantasy.

As for Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 is his best anti-utopian SF. Martian Chronicles is a beautiful, almost poetic collection of stories. The Illustrated Man contains probably his best stories. Something Wicked This Way Comes is wicked horror. Wanna try something different? Try Dinosaur Tales, equally enchanting for kids and adults.

And a list of prophetic anti-utopian SF cannot be complete without the newer, but perhaps even scarier, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Have you heard of T.J. Bass (Thomas J. Bassler)? He has published only two novels. Perhaps not brilliantly written as far as prose goes, but they harbor some great ideas and a wonderful exploration of the evolution of (eu)sociality and what it means to be human. I warmly recommend both of them: Half Past Human and Godwhale. The second is usually considered to be better. I wish he has written more.

No list can be without Robert Anston Heinlein, probably my most favourite SF writter of all. He was so prolific, it is really difficult to choose. If you want to introduce a young person to SF, some of Heinlein's juveniles are the best entry point. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, Have Spacesuit - Will Travel, Friday, Podkayne From Mars, Farmer in the Sky, Puppet Masters and many others are people's favourites. Stranger In The Strange Land is probably his best novel, certainly notable for giving the English language the wonderful word "to grok". My favourite is Time Enough For Love, though it may perhaps be a little too much for a young novice (give the prequel, Methusaleh's Children, to a younger reader instead - there is a cool multi-sex breeding system described within)).

Clifford Simak has written one novel many, many times. Whatever you read by him you will like. Also, you will want to move to Wisconsin after reading any one of his books. While Way Station may be his most famous piece (and it is very good), the real classic is The City. The City belongs even on the shortest, most restricitive list of the best SF ever.

I have only read More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. It is a classic for a reason! Anything else worth reading?

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. is always on these lists. I have to admit, sheepishly, that I have not read it yet. I own a copy and want to read it but it somehow never happens...Perhaps one day....

Arthur C. Clarke is not one of my greatest favourites of all times, but his Childhood's End is brilliant. His short stories are better, so check out this collection of his, or perhaps Tales from the White Hart.

I have read preciously little by Isaak Asimov, not even a single Foundation novel. I guess I, Robot is a classic that has to be on every 'must-read' list.

Phillip Jose Farmer is the author of the fabulous Riverboat series. The first three books are superb. The fourth is passable (and it answers some questions and ties some loose ends). Don't bother with the fifth one - that one was written just for the money. Lovers is my favourite Farmer novel - another interesting mating strategy. Then, The World of Tiers trilogy is one of the rare pieces of fantasy that I liked. Still, I most prefer his stories, so I'd give, as a present, a collection of his stories. I am still in love with Dr.Legsandbrains from the story "Only He Can Make A Tree". I've been looking for her all my life....

Speaking of fantasy, apart from a bunch of Tolkien and very few other pieces (OK, OK, Harry Potter series), my favourite is the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. I think this was the real inspiration for Potter, not Narnia or Lord Of The Rings as most people believe. Again, read just the first three books. I heard that the follow-ups are atrociously bad. Most of the other stuff by LeGuin is pure SF and it is all good. How about Collected Novels (of the Hainish Series) as a holiday gift to a person you like? Dispossessed and Left Hand Of Darkness are her most famous and arguably best novels. The Lathe of Heaven is also very good. Wanna know my personal pick? The Word For World Is Forest.

John Wyndham is dark, dark, dark. Chrysallids is the one I've read multiple times, first time when I was far too young for it.

James Blish. A biologist must love this guy! Seedling Stars is the most evolutionary SF book ever! Titan's Daughter is quite thought-provoking - one of the earliest novels about genetic engineering. And try Cities In Flight, too.

Kurt Vonnegut. What's to say? The Man is The Master! the most science-fictiony of his works are Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, Galapagos, The Sirens of Titan and
Timequake. I think I have read every single book Kurt has ever written, including all the collections of stories.

When Frank Herbert was still alive and churning out new installments in the Dune series every year, I promised I'd wait until he died, buy the whole series, then wait until I am bed-ridden for a few weeks to read it all. Well, he died. I collected all installments in Serbo-Croatian. Then I moved to the USA. Fortunately, I still had no opportunity to read it. Not even the first one. But I loved his Green Brain! Social insects and stuff. And again in Hellstrom's Hive.

I am not much into cyberpunk. If you are, the best start, they say, is William Gibson: Idoru, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition. One day I will force myself to read some of that stuff....And you can read his blog, too.

Gordon Dickson. Although the very last book in the series, The Final Encyclopedia is independent enough from the rest of the Dorsai cycle to be read on its own. It is brilliant. People who think a lot about blogosphere, wikipedia, connectedness and knowledge, should read this. And if reading it makes you want to read the series from the beginning , start with #1, the Necromancer. My Dickson favourite? Masters of Everon, where animals behave in a strange way.

Will Baker is a newer, younger writer, and most of his stuff is not SF. If you thought Masters of Everon was good (and I did), you'll be floored by Shadow Hunter, where animals behave in a REALLY strange way. I bought three or four copies once and gave all but one to friends as presents.

Poul Anderson. Try Brainwave.

Gregory Benford: A scientist's hard SF. Try Timescape, Beyond Infinity, The Martian Race or Eater.

Harry Harrison. First, the serious stuff, the Eden trilogy:West of Eden, Winter in Eden and Return to Eden. Deathworld is a misnamed classic. Make Room Make Room is the book on which the movie Soylent Green was losely based. On a less serious note, Harrison is one of the funniest SF writers. Try Bill the Galactic Hero (and subsequent novels in the series) or The Stainless Steel Rat (and many more in that series).

Brian Aldiss. Try Long Afternoon Of Earth, Non-Stop, Greybeard and Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, to begin with.

The Drowned World is the only novel by J.G. Ballard I have read. I really should read some more.

Orson Scott Card. Ender's Game is absolutely brilliant. The follow-ups are, in comparison, nothing special. Tales of Alvin Maker: Seventh Son, Red Prophet, and Prentice Alvin is another one of the preciously few fantasy series I liked. I hear that nothing else by Card is worth your time and money, but have not tested that hypothesis myself, as I don't want to waste my time and money testing it.

Buy yourself The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy - all five books in one tome. Not enough Douglas Adams? Try Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.

Momo by Michael Ende is supposedly for kids, and it barely qualifies as SF, but I loved it. It's about time thieves.

Michael Crichton. Stay away from his latest! But some of the old stuff is pretty good and fun to read, including
The Andromeda Strain, Timeline, Sphere, Congo and Jurassic Park.

Raptor Red, a story narrated by a dinosaur, was written not by a professional writer, but by a professional paleontologist - Robert Bakker. Thus, the prose is not the most beautiful you have ever encountered, but it is a cool read for science geeks like me.

And he is not the only paleontologist trying his hand at SF. George Gaylord Simpson wrote The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, which was published only after he died.

A for Andromeda by the astronomer Fred Hoyle is actually a fast good read.

Terry Pratchet is hillarious. Pick any one you like. My recent favourites: Thief of Time and The Truth. The former about the consequences of building a perfect clock, the latter about the newspaper business. Don't drink and read (or use a napkin).

You want funny? Here's funny: Robert Asprin - anything by him. I love the M.Y.T.H. Inc series - all of it. I like the Phule series. I like the Thieves' World series. I liked the best of all The Cold Cash War. Light summer (or travelling) reading - very funny.

Thanatos Syndrome by Walker Percy is excellent - aging, societal control and scary fast action.

John Darnton. The Experiment is one of the better takes on cloning. And the Neanderthal is pretty good, too. The Darwin Conspiracy is new and I want it - a modern-day Rashomon. I'd also like to read his Mind Catcher.

Conrads' Time Machine by Leo Frankowski is a hillarious prequel to his series. If what reviewers say - that this is the weakest book in the series - is true, I can't wait to get hold of the others!

Speaking of time-travel stories that gave up on explaining the paradoxes and just invite you to go for a ride (together with a baby Brontosaur), the best one is John Kessel's Corrupting Dr. Nice. If you like it, try his other novel, Good News From Outer Space or the collection of his short stories, The Pure Product.

Vernor Vinge is another Grand Master. A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are astoundingly good. I can't wait for his next, Tatja Grimm's World, to come out in January! In the meantime, I should read some of his other stuff, like The Peace War.... On the other hand, I could never really warm up to the works of his wife, Joan Vinge. Just not my style, I guess.

Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson is pretty good, although it starts slow - I almost gave up in the beginning, but then it became better as the pace quickened. Perhaps I should give him another try.

Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe is the best SF novel that is, among else, about blogs and Internet. Of course he would know, he runs Boing Boing and Craphound!

C.J.Cherryh, Bruce Sterling and Ken MacLeod are bloggers, too. I am ashamed to say I have not read anything by them. Where should I start?

Speaking of SF bloggers, I really need to buy and read Hominids, Humans and Hybrids by Robert Sawyer. What else by him is good?

Still with SF bloggers, David Brin is really good. I really need to read more of his stuff. I have only read The Uplift War, but so long ago I barely remember it, and, more recently Postman (which I reviewed here). Is Glory Season good?

And speaking of books I reviewed here, Jennifer Government by Max Barry is really good.

I did not review it, but I used it as a starting point for a post before - Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear (who also has a blog). While James Blish tapped into neo-Darwinian Synthesis for his evolution-rich novels, Greg Bear is up to date on the current version of evolutionary theory, the evo-devo kind. The second book in the series, Darwin's Children is as good if not better. I can't wait for the third one. In the meantime, I've been reading a lot of older Bear's stuff, and loved it all. I can say that he is my currently favourite SF author. I've read and (except for, perhaps, Heads) recommend Blood Music, The Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, Psychlone and Vitals. My wife has read and loved Dead Lines, but then she gave it away before I had a chance to read it. And I should read Moving Mars before the movie comes out.

Joan Slonczewski is a real biologist who writes SF in her spare time and also uses SF to teach biology. So far, I have read the delightful Wall Around Eden and am looking forward to her more hard-SF stuff, like The Children Star, Door into Ocean, Daughter of Elysium, Still Forms on Foxfield and Brain Plague.

Connie Willis. So far I have read To Say Nothing of the Dog, Bellwether and Fire Watch (a collection of stories), and am looking forward to reading Passage. Wonderful writer. Amazing researcher of historical minutiae, too!

Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh is one of the funniest books I have read in the past 10 years. It is a delight for entomologists, too. The exterminator, in this case, uses genetically modified insects to exterminate people - for money. I've also read Organ Grinders by the same author, and will seek some of his other books soon.

David Dvorkin is a Kossian. I got his Ursus and Time for Sherlock Holmes recently. Reviews look good, but I have not read them yet.

Neal Stephenson is all the rave these days. I own, but have not read yet, his big hits, Snow Crash, Zodiac and The Diamond Age. I have recently bought, and intend to read one day, the trilogy: Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World. Is Big U any good?

The Calcutta Chromosome : A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery by Amitav Ghosh was a tremendous surprise. It is an amazingly good novel. Has anyone read anything else by him? Is it SF?

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq was the most recent pleasant surprise. The catch is - and I am sure not everyone is going to like that - you don't know it is SF until the very end.

Add your own in the comments...

Tag: teaching-carnival

Link to link to link to memetree

Go here to watch a meme spread. I suggest you spend at least a few minutes on that page. More info here. Hat-tip: Eric.

Carnival of the Godless

The Carnival of the Godless Christmas Extravaganza! is up on Nanovirus. Get your antidote today!

Tar Heel Tavern

Tar Heel Tavern #44 is up on Pratie Place. No rest for the Carolina bloggers!

Wonks and Cranks

Big debate over Wonkery and Activism on blogs is brewing around the biggies in the Left Blogistan. Let me rehash it quickly before starting my own rant.

It all started with a Washington Monthly article titled Kos Call by Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

"Moulitsas is just basically uninterested in the intellectual and philosophical debates that lie behind the daily political trench warfare. By his own admission, he just doesn't care about policy.
--------------------
He doesn't pretend to be a policy wonk. But the more that the Democratic Party turns to Moulitsas for help, the more the limits to his movement become apparent, the less the raw animus of many liberals for the Iraq war seems likely to translate into any lasting liberal movement, and the more the current obsession with his brand of Winnerism looks misplaced."

Markos responds:

"But I'm not sure where the notion that Daily Kos had to singularly encapsulate the entire VLWC came from. Everyone has a role. I see Daily Kos as part of our noise machine, with tangents into organizing, fundraising, and even think tank wonkery (like the energy policy work organized by Jerome). But at the end of the day, this site won't replace the need for a network of think tanks to challenge CATO, Heritage, and the like. In fact, our book makes this very clear -- there is no single solution to the problems facing the party. The blogs (like this one) are a piece of the puzzle, but it's a big-ass puzzle with lots of parts.
So the fact that Daily Kos isn't particularly focused on policy isn't a bug, it's a feature. We can't single-handedly rescue the progressive movement. We are but a small part of a much broader whole."

And responds again:

"But the gist of it -- that we focus too much on tactics and too little on policy, is a feature, not a bug. All the policy talk in the world is pretty useless when it means zero. I'm sure when Dems take back our government, policy will take a more prominant role on this and other blogs. But aside from that, there is a ton of policy talk on this site (the diaries are full of it) and the rest of the progressive blogosphere."

Wallace-Wells corrects some of his errors (Amazing!)

Garance Franke-Ruta comments on the whole exchange on the Tapped blog:

"Standing up, standing firm, and standing tough are all essential for Democrats to win again -- but the single most important deficit cited by voters in survey after survey, and focus group after focus group, is a lack of clarity about what Democrats stand for."

Kevin Drum adds:

"All political movements have both tacticians and theoreticians, so there's nothing odd that Kos is all about tactics and prefers to leave the ideology to others. But there's more to it than that. To a large extent, I think Kos is symbolic of nearly the entire political blogosphere, which tends to be far more a partisan wrecking crew than a genuine force for either progressive or conservative thought.
--------------
None of which is to say that Kos himself has to be a policy wonk. There's plenty of room for all kinds".

Atrios makes an important point (sorry for pasting the whole thing, but it is short, concentrated and indivisible, and I want to make sure that the mouse-lazy folks read it):

"I've said this before, but there's just little point in detail-oriented grand policy proposals when Bush and Republicans are in office. Just about everything their side offers up involves tax cuts, corporate pork, or cuts to programs that help keep granny from freezing to death in winter. The rest are complete disasters for obvious reason, like the Medicare drug plan, and there's really not much to discuss.
If our team actually had some power we could be debating the merits of various universal health care proposals, or considering just how large a minimum wage increase might be appropriate, or various other wonky things. It would be good fun. But we live in an unserious age where the people running the government have no interest in policy and the people not running government have no ability to get anything passed without having anything good about it destroyed by the Republicans.
The 90s were a delightfully wonky era when serious center-left political types spent lots of time debating lots of things. We had a wonky president, a wonky vice president, and an utterly bored press corps, until the blow jobs happened anyway. I'd like a chance to spend more time talking about how policy matters, but the space just isn't really there right now."

And again Atrios adds:

".....While I don't see wonkery as an especially important part of the day to day public discourse - by pundits, bloggers, columnists, and even politicians - that doesn't mean that the Wonks in Exile shouldn't be toiling away in their wonky dungeons doing the FSM's work. Research should be done, policy proposals written, etc... I just don't think that, in general, such things are an especially important feature of our public debate at the moment. There are exceptions and having the wonky tools in place when they arise is crucial.
But even the social security debate was basically a defensive one. Such wonkery is necessary when those moments arise, but there's little point in having public debates about detailed policies which can't possibly pass, etc..."

NewsHog:

"Now the truth is Duncan couldn't wonk if his life depended on it nowadays. He's a snark and link engine, nothing more. But talk about handing the Right their talking points... "Atrios says not only does the Left have no new ideas, it shouldn't have any new ideas!"

Then Max speaks out in defense of wonkery:

"Some people are saying that in an adverse political environment, research or policy are not very important. My self-interest here is obvious, but maybe I can still convince you this is a mistaken belief.
One implication that might be drawn from this belief not asserted explicitly is that facts don't matter. All that matters is who can shout the loudest. I beg to differ. You may be able to shout, but if what you have to say is crap, the volume isn't much of an asset.
----------------------
For some to discount facts is understandable since they often fail to appreciate how difficult it is to ascertain and document important facts. They dismiss policy analysis and research because they don't do it, don't know how to do it, and don't understand what role it plays in the political process."

Read the rest - it is good!

Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber also defends wonks:

"I think this misses the point. Not only is a certain amount of wonkishness on the left a good thing in itself, but it can be an important political weapon."

Kevin Drum responds:

"My own view is that in addition to activism, which blogs obviously excel at, blogs can also be very good at what I call "policy-lite" — short but serious takes on policy issues leavened with enough red meat to make it entertaining. It's not the same thing as a Brookings white paper or even a 5,000-word Washington Monthly article, but blogs do provide a forum to educate and inform at a non-expert level in between all the snarkiness and partisan catcalling."

Angry Bear:

"Of course, we spend more time on debunking than "grand policy proposals" per se here, because there's so much debunking to be done and there is in fact little likelihood of grand proposals going anywhere in the near term."

Michael on Discourse.net:

"The truth may not always set you free, but there is no real freedom without truth.
Academics, wonky bloggers, muckrakers, we all play our small parts in the Experiment that is democracy."

He also posts an oh-so-true joke on the subject.

Next, Ezra Klein, also defending wonkery on his own blog:

"Who are we writing for, anyway? Assuming that knowing policy is a good in and of itself, isn't there an inherent utility in using our blogs to better inform our readers? I mean, most of my visitors already don't like Republicans. My work there is done. But now, they don't only dislike Republicans, but they know a lot of boring facts about health care. That's value for ya."

Digby really has a way with words (and ideas):

"............These and the many great blogwonks are essential to the left blogosphere. They are a tremendous resource that I (a card carrying partisan crank) treasure and I link to them more often than anyone else. They are often compelling writers who effectively convey complex information to the lay reader and offer excellent analysis. So I'm not sure I see the beef. I rarely find it difficult to get educated on any number of subjects when I need to (which is often.)
-------------------
Wonkery is reason. The comaraderie we find among those of our online political tribe is heart. Successful politics requires both.
------------------
So I say hooray for the wonkosphere and the crankosphere. I know that each side sometimes offends the sensibilities of the other but we should warmly embrace our bretheren no matter what our temperaments incline us to. Robust progressive politics requires both."

I picked nice one-liners. For substance, go read Digby's post, especially the parts I replaced with dashes.

Neil the Ethical Werewolf pitches in:

"Markos rightly sees himself as having a fairly well-defined role within the partisan wrecking crew, and he wants wonks to do their thing and do it well. It's kind of like having a debate over whether good offensive linemen are worthwhile, just because there was a big media fuss over a cornerback. The reason that there's any discussion of this is because we haven't been on offense for a while. The offensive linemen are looking at each other, thinking, "do we really matter?" Wonks matter big-time, and doubts will end as soon as our partisans get us the ball back."

Pepper of Daily Pepper:

"Wonks do most of the heavy lifting of the blogosphere in that they are the individuals who wade through facts and pull out the information that applies to us. Essentially, wonks are nerds who specialize in politics. Instead of a pocket protector and slide rule, they arm themselves with reams of policy papers that they kindly translate for the rest of us. Those facts are repeated in "Dick-and-Jane" format by politicians, and the wonks get little to no credit."

Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math:

"Still, wonks have value in the public sphere. They provide a set of policies that help reinforce political identification, which gives partisans ideas to believe in beyond the rhetoric that stems from their preferred politicians.
-----------------------------
Doesn't "public wonkery" sound like something that's illegal in Alabama?"

Stirling Newberry:

"However, it is important to see wonking in context. All too often, Democrats wonk first, arguing over niggling problems, rather than getting the context right first. Wonking is only important if it is in service of a vision, or an identified problem. At the same time, the ability to deliver policy, both in outline and in detail, is often what turns the tide of a political fight.
-----------------------
Combining policy making with the rest of the political operation, and having a better flow between rhetoric, politicking and policy is, however, essential. It isn't that the Democratic side of the ledger has fewer ideas - it is that all too often they are sealed off in little sections."

Shakespeare's Sister is exposing the unconscious biases of all of the above bloggers:

"That said, there is plenty of good policy debate about issues that “don’t matter”—reproductive rights, women’s issues, gay rights, etc. On the gay marriage issue alone, I can point in the direction of pieces and associated discussions about court opinions, specifically what legal benefits would be conferred by marriage rights, framing, history, and specific policy prescriptions: civil unions v. marriage, government civil unions as the default for all people with religious ceremonies left to churches, equality amendments in the mold of the ERA, etc. Endless policy-specific information can be found on abortion, emergency contraception, and access to birth control. Ditto abstinence-only sex education. And all of these are inevitably discussed with an ideological context. Necessarily so, in fact, because neither party particularly considers them winning issues, and they are quick to be compromised by both politicians looking for a win and blogosphere partisans in search of the same.
I’m not convinced there’s a lack of wonkery in the blogosphere. At first blush, my thought is that there’s simply a lack of wonkery on particular issues, and that this is of a feather with the generally lower profile in the upper echelons of women bloggers. I could well be wrong; I need to think about it some more."

Bigger Picture

I think that Shakes Sis is really onto something here. Perhaps she opened a little crack, and I saw a narrow beam of light come through it that gave me some ideas. Let me try to widen that crack a little more and see if more light will come through.

The division of bloggers (and not just bloggers - pundits, journalists, politicians, etc.) into these two categories - wonks and activists, theoreticians and tacticians, wonkosphere and crankosphere - has a root in some much older times. My guess is it all harks back to all of these people (or their sources) having read, at some time in their past, Eric Hoffer's True Believer.

Hoffer wrote his book in 1951, focusing on revolutionary movements of fascism, nazism and communism (Stalin and Mao versions). While many took the take-home messages from the book about the way social outcasts are easily recruited into mass movements, my main memory of the book is its division of mass movements into three phases, each characterized with a different types of leaders with different temperaments.

According to Hoffer, a mass movement starts with ideologues (or visionaries) writing ideology (Phase I). They are educated and smart and good with words. But they are also tentative and shy, so they pass on the leadership torch to revolutionaries, the charismatic bold leaders who are capable to inspire fire in their followers and to make the movement grow (Phase II). However, once the victory is won (Phase III), neither the ideologues nor the revolutionaries are temperamentally suited for governing and they need to pass the torch to diplomats, people who know how to get along with people, manipulate people with a smile, and push their policies through against the opposition.

Hoffer's description is quite relevant for literal revolutions - people with rifles on barricades, storming government buildings in the capital and taking over. Hoffer's description is far too simplistic to transpose wholesale onto the situation of here and now.

How does the present situation differ? First, it is not a new movement - it is the Democratic Party, though the idelogy certainly changes over time. Second, the method of gaining power is through winning elections, not military coups, though the Republicans are trying hard to make sure that ballots don't matter. Fourth, the elections are happening at several levels: federal, state and local, as well as in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches. Finally, the methods of exhange of information are much different now than 60 years ago, too, especially with regards to the Internet.

This situation requires a much more complex taxonomy of players than just wonks (ideologues) and cranks (revolutionaries). I think that some of the bloggers cited above may subconsciously sense this, as they tend to use the two terms in somewhat different meanings. Why do some of them think that Kevin Drum is a wonk, while others (including me) think he's a crank? Nobody even tried to define these two terms - the assumption is that everybody knows already. But if the two terms are inaplicable to modern times, it is to be expected that different people mean different things when they try to apply outdated terms to contemporary situations.

Let me try to skech out an alternative taxonomy briefly - please comment on it - and see how it applies to the Left Blogistan.

A) Policy experts. I assume that this is what some of the people would consider "wonks". People with proper education in a field (e.g., law, economics), thinking about, writing about, and proposing policy solutions to such problems as health care, education, Social Security or foreign policy. Each is a specialist, cranking numbers and deciphering the terminology, proposing systems and mechanisms that, in their opinion, will work if applied in the real world. They tend to live in think tanks of which the Left has far too few.

B) Big Picture guys. These are the real ideologues. People who look at what the policy experts propose and pick those proposals that, put all together, make an internally coherent ideological system - something that is much easier to sell to voters than a grocery list of independent (and hard-to-understand) policy proposals. They are the unifiers of the movement. Think of George Lakoff in "Moral Politics"

C) Tacticians. These are the people with access to the information channels (e.g., media) and/or the candidates running for office. They are pollsters and campaign managers. Their job is to have a deep understanding of the way the electorate thinks - what pulls their strings, what words and ideas resonate. Their job is to take the wholesale ideologies from the Big Picture guys and to distill them into campaign slogans and speeches. Their job is to sell the ideology (which contains within it all the specific policy proposals, too) and the candidates to as many people as possible. Think of Joe Trippi, or George Lakoff in "Don't Think Of An Elephant."

D) Leaders. Charismatic types that can rally the troops either with things they say, or the way they say it, or with their sheer personalities. They run for office, of course. Think of Dean and Edwards, each inspiring and charismatic (though for somewhat different audiences).

E) Groundtroops. Activists knocking on doors, courageous enough to try to convert complete strangers. They write letters to the editor in local newspapers, spend hours and days phonebanking, stuffing flyers, blogging on campaign blogs, making signs, organizing campaign events etc. They freeze in Iowa and New Hampshire in January.

F) Cheerleaders. They pick up the slogans. They try to convert their family and neighbors. They show up at campaign events and send in donations. They are the first in line to vote on the Election Day. But they do not have the time, enthusiasm or courage to do much more.

G) The Unwashed Masses. Duh. They don't care. All politicians are corrupt, they say. It does not affect them, they think. They are just fine. Taxes are too high. Government is not providing enough services, though. But get the government off their backs. And evolution promotes immorality. If someone picks them up in the morning, they'll vote - otherwise they'll forget.

It is the duty of Groundtroops to convert TUMs into Cheerleaders, by explaining how dangerous the current Party in power is, how directly those policies are affecting them negatively, and how the alternative is going to change this. Some policy knowledge is needed for this effort (to intelligently answer questions), but slogans do most of the work.

Some knowledge is neccessary at some stages and for some voters, though - Edwards' most effective campaign tool in the Dem primaries was his policy booklet "Real Solutions for America". Each copy of the booklet converted more Iowa voters than a whole brigade of loud, angry and obnoxious Deaniacs.

Unfortunately, these are the so-called "swing voters", quite capable of voting for the President just because he is the President, too afraid of change even if that change means jumping out of boiling water. Lobsters. But they are worth their weight in gold if you can get them. They are the target of ALL of the effort.

H) Potential Elected "Diplomats". People who will actually do the work once elected, or once the elected charismatics hire them to run things. They better know what they're doing! They are usually kept behind the curtain, although good reputations of some of them can be used as campaign "promises". After all, GW Bush was elected on the premise that, though dumb himself, he will surround himself with smart, competent people (see what current mafia is running the country - but a lot of voters swallowed this canard). Again, both Dean and Edwards are smart can-do people who would surround themselves with experts on top of their own expertise and intelligence.

Of course, this taxonomy is too tidy. Many people belong to more than one category. Hey, I've been, at one point or another almost ALL of this: wonk on science education policy (A), blogging profusely about the big picture of liberal (and conservative, to contrast) ideology (B), suggesting ways to frame issues (C), actively working for Edwards, then Kerry/Edwards, as well as Erskine Bowles (both E and F at different stages of the campaign), and totally agnostic on some issues (e.g., Confederate Flag, or gun control) due to my non-existent background of growing up American (G). I am even strongly contrarian on a couple of issues dear to the Left - the Balkans bombing and the animal rights, two subjects I know a lot about, where I side with the Right, as much as the Right takes the right position on these issues for all the wrong reasons. And of course, I can never be either D or H.

How About the Blogs?

Rare are the blogs in the Lefty Blogistan that easily fit into just one of the above categories. Look just at my blog - it is all of it in various proportions that change over time. Certainly a large blog community like DailyKos has all of it. Even Sen. Boxer and some other elected officials sometimes blog there. There are Diaries of all kinds, covering A through H. DailyKos itself, as well as the whole Left blogosphere, is a mix of everything, and most importantly, a way to build a community that connects together people who feel comfortable in one or two of the categories and leave the other roles to other people.

But there is another way in which the taxonomy is not entirely correct, and that is what Shakespeare's sister alluded to. Counting Social Security, foreign policy and healthcare as policy issues is an anachronism. The biggest ideological divide is the psychological divide - hierarchical vs. interactionist thinking - from which all the other policies naturally grow.

The psychological divide is most strongly and emotionally exhibited in the aspects of the Culture Wars: religion, creationism, femiphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, xenophobia, rampant nationalism and fear. Those are the most important prongs in the multi-prong strategy of the GOP because they elicit strong emotional responses in voters the way no economic issue can ever hope to do. They also consitute the core of the conservative ideology, which also contains such peripheral stuff like low taxes, groupthink, reverence for the rich and for megacorporations, aggressive military, harsh legal and penal systems, and intrusive government.

When some people say that Kevin Drum is a wonk, and I say he is not, it is due to this misunderstanding of what is important. Kevin may write about economic topics. But those who say that is wonkery miss the point - those are not the key issues in the ideological war. They are peripherals - stuff we can agree on once in power. They are not part of the war itself. The war trenches are dug firmly in the domain of cultural issues, not economics.

Thus, the people in category B, the Big Picture folks, while sifting through the policy proposals of the experts (A) in order to build a coherent ideology, need to, if they are smart enough, to pay special attention to people who do not have PhD's in economics, law or political science. They need to pay at least the same, if not more, attention to people whose expertise is more helpful in analysing the cultural domain: psychologists and antropologists, evolutionary biologists and educators. Then again, a PhD is not the only way to gain expertise. Being a woman, or non-religious, or a minority, or gay (or all of the above), provides a real-life expertise which campaign managers (and cranks on blogs) ignore to their peril.

Who is an expert in the blogosphere? Does a PhD count as much as in the offline world. If someone writes a post a day, for two years, on a single issue, and obviously does the research and makes sense - is that person an expert even without official credentials? Is a woman thinking and writing about woman's issues not automatically an expert? Is it wise to ignore their thoughts?

One of the reasons that the GOP has been so effective lately is that everyone, from A to H, is part of the team. They all know their places and their roles and they fulfill them ruthlessly. Just see how their blogosphere operates - hierarchical organization and strict division of labor.

On the Left, some (especially the B and the G) are looked down upon and dismissed, yet those two are the best sources of information needed by the other categories in order to design a winning strategy. Focusing on A (policy wonks) and C (campaign operatives, i.e., cranks) is a misguided way of thinking about politics. It is the Bs, studying the Gs that should be the starting point - the Phase I in the post-Hofferian world, with the others following their insights, not inventing their own strategies out of the blue, or based on old, out-dated ideas (that could not elect a Democrat for a long time anyway).

The way it is now, we have many spoiled star players, but no team. Each player pushes for a different strategy or some different conrete 'plays'. There is nobody to set the overarching vision for a winning strategy based on what works.

Whereas, the days designated as holidays are to begin...

A Legal Holiday Greeting:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
............. (read the rest)

‘The night before Christmas’ in legalese:

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.
.............. (read the rest)

Ah, How True!

I've left this stage behind a long time ago, but I still remember it. Ah, how true:
No comment. Ah, how true:

My timeline is just about right. Who has a PhD defense before writing a thesis, though? Ah, how true:

Who's going to do this to me? Ah, how true:

See much more at PhD Comics

I And The Bird #13

The latest edition of I And The Bird is up on WordSong.

Some unintended consequences of global warming

Birds, mammals, insects, plants...everything is affected:

Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming

Seven Times Seven Meme

Mustang Bobby tagged me with this meme, so here it is:

Seven Things To Do Before I Die

1. Visit every country in the world and spend some time in a few of them
2. Attend New Year's concert in Vienna and pretend to be rich
3. Write and publish a book
4. Have a paper published in Science and/or Nature
5. See my great-grand-children one day
6. Go to the Olympics, at least as audience (hey, I can still do equestrian dressage at my age)
7. Win a Koufax Award

Seven Things I Cannot Do

1. Stop talking
2. Gain weight
3. Believe in supernatural beings of any kind
4. Write good fiction or poetry
5. Earn money by blogging
6. Bungie-jump, parachute, sky-dive or wing-glide - too scared
7. Scuba-dive - too scared

Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging

1. Mysterious female political bloggers - if you are aware of their existence - because they are hot!
2. New $5 in my tip-jar gives me an excuse (to Mrs.Coturnix) to do nothing else for the subsequent 24 hours
3. It's like meeting friends at the bar, except the drinks are cheaper, the music is not too loud, and I get to do all the talking.
4. Free doughnuts at BloggerCons
5. Nobody cares who you are, just how you think
6. Helps me greatly reduce my smoking habit - I'd rather blog than go out to smoke
7. TV does not respond when I vent my anger and frustration

Seven Things I Say Most Often

1. Kids, hurry up!
2. Are you a good puppy or a bad puppy?
3. Are you the prettiest kitty-cat in the world or what?
4. When is it going to be my turn to use the computer, dammit?
5. I'll finish my Dissertation by the end of the year, I swear!
6. I'll be back!
7. Honey, I'm home!

Seven Books That I Love

Only Seven!@#$%^& Not fair!

1. Complete Stories by Mark Twain
2. Complete Stories about Sherlock Holmes
3. Complete Stories by Edgar Alan Poe
4. Complete Stories by Philip Jose Farmer
5. Complete Stories by H.G.Welles
6. Everything by Stephen Jay Gould, but especially The Big Book
7. Origin of Species (1st Edition)

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again (a longer list is here)

1. Fiddler on the Roof
2. Seventh Seal
3. Seven Samurai
4. Hair
5. Enter the Dragon
6. Coyote Ugly
7. AristoCATs

Seven People I Want To Join In Too

1. Hedwig The Owl
2. Rana
3. Shakespeare's Sister
4. Roxanne
5. Jill AND Lauren
6. Lindsay
7. Amanda AND Pam

(I know, that's nine, but that is just in case someone refuses)

The Origin of the White Race

Just a single point mutation. One amino-acid substitution. That's it.

Did I Really Say That?

A fellow by the name of Martin Porter was not so sure that the quote ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ can really be attributed to Burke.

Here is what he found in his detailed search and here is a follow-up.

This is an amazing study of the way stuff floats around, mutates and evolves. Or perhaps it is an example of the game of Broken Telephones.

(Hat-tip: GreenSpace)

Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions

No break for the holidays. Melinama of Pratie Place will be hosting the Tar Heel Tavern this weekend. Send her the entries ASAP.

Obligatory Reading of the Day

A Natural History of Peace By Robert M. Sapolsky

Primatology in Foreign Affairs

Diebold machines leave North Carolina

Voting machine maker leaves N.C.: Officials fear Diebold's move will hurt efforts to replace machines.

The law requires companies to disclose details about their machines' software, which Diebold Election Systems said it could not do. The company told the State Board of Elections on Wednesday it would not keep trying to sell its equipment here.

Good riddance!

Carnival of Bad History #4

Carnival of Bad History #4 is up on Neural Gourmet. Go and enjoy the debunking!

Shameless Begging

I see some other bloggers are doing this. Instead of asking for a hit on a tip-jar, they have made bookstore wishlists. So, here is my wish list on Amazon.com, if anyone is in a giving mood...

My Koufax nominations

I think I am done nominating. In a day or two, they will close the nominations and the voting will begin. It was really hard making choices - I wanted to put my whole blogroll on there. And it is just going to get tougher when it is one man/one vote. So, here is what I submitted over the last few days:

Best Blog – Non-Sponsored Division
Pandagon
Shakespeare's Sister
Pharyngula
Legal Fiction
Majikthise
Bitch PhD
Frogs and Ravens
Echidne of the Snakes
Firedoglake
Feministe
Rox Populi
Ed Cone
Hullabaloo
Michael Berube Online
Lance Mannion
Creek Running North
Science And Politics

Best Blog – Pro Division
Talking Points Memo
Yglesias
Tapped
Ezra Klein
Dent
Xark!
Joe Trippi
Bloggermann
Alternet blogs
Daou Report
Political Animal
The Intersection

Best Blog Community
My Left Wing
Booman Tribune
TPM Cafe
Uncsrewing the Inscrutable
The Uncapitalist Journal
European Tribune
Yearly Kos
OAC Blog

Best Writing
Lance Mannion
Creek Running North
Nancy Nall
Neil Shakespeare
Michael Berube Online
Anonymoses
Rana
Echidne
Amanda Marcotte
Shakespeare's Sister
Stirling Newberry
Jeffrey Feldman
Matthew Nisbett
Paul Rosenberg

Best Post
Idiot America
Planet of the Hats
Life and Death
Backtracking Birds Show Islands are not Evolutionary Dead Ends
An apologia for Republicans, seriously---well, almost seriously
THE FATE OF NATIONALISM - Genetics and Cultural Lag
The Problems With Third Parties
I Want Bigger Government
Regressives
Perils of Ideological Continua

Best Series
Slacktivist, reading "Left Behind" books so we don't have to.
Pooflingers Anonymous, watching Kent Hovind movies, so we don't have to.
Contrary Brin on Modernism and Enlightement: Parts 1-10, Parts 11-15 and Parts 16-17
From Total Information Awareness: The Fog of Withdrawal, Part One, The Fog of Withdrawal, Part Two and The Fog of Withdrawal, Part Three
From Science And Politics, a series on Lakoff and understanding the conservative mind: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,

Best Single Issue Blog
Evolutionblog
Total Information Awareness
Animal Crackers
Pam's House Blend
The Intersection
East Ethnia
Hugo Schwyzer
NC Conservation Network Blog
MattHillNC

Best Group Blog
Panda's Thumb
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Pandagon
Blondesense
Real Climate
ScienceGate
Cosmic Variance
American Street
Philosophy of Biology
DefCon Blog
Big Brass Blog
Liberal Coalition
Corrente Wire
American Footprints
Orange Politics
NC Conservation Network Blog

Most Humorous Blog
Jesus General
Pearlswine
Neil Shakespeare
Decorabilia
Coeruleus (She Flies With Her Own Wings)

Most Deserving of Wider Recongition
Legal Fiction
Tom Watson
Arse Poetica
Archy
Total Information Awareness
Decorabilia
Coeruleus (She Flies With Her Own Wings)
Contrary Brin
Pam's House Blend
Frogs and Ravens
Doctor Biobrain
Linkmeister
Happy Furry Puppy Story Time
Bark Bark Woof Woof
Iddybud
Brilliant at Breakfast
Lenin's Tomb
Five Wells
The Green Knight
Keat's Telescope
Science And Politics

Best Expert Blog
Pharyngula
Circadiana
Leiter Reports
Effect Measure
Afarensis
Mixing Memory
Cognitive Daily
Thoughts From Kansas
Mike The Mad Biologist
The Loom
East Ethnia
Orcinus
Living the Scientific Life
John Hawks
Brad DeLong
Keat's Telescope
Stirling Newberry
Jeffrey Feldman
Matthew Nisbett
Paul Rosenberg

Best New Blog
Buridan's Ass
Contrary Brin
Aetiology
Adventures in Ethics and Science (Dr.Freeride)
The Executioner's Thong
Dadahead
Daveawayfromhome
Olduvai George
Framing Science

Best State/Local Political Blog
Orange Politics
Ed Cone
NC Conservation Network Blog
Blue NC
GreeneSpace
Sandy's Place
Ruby Sienreich
Hogg's Blog
Southern Rants
The Stinging Nettle
Dent
Will Raymond

Best Commenter
johnnybutter
John Mackay
Eric Martin
Eric Gordy
Chris Clark
Will Raymond

This is a test...

OK, it works. I'll see over time if it is an improvement or not....

Science News

* Study finds memories are like mental time travel:
When you remember something, your brain recreates the patterns of activity it had when the event happened, according to a study that also involved some "mind reading."

* Reports: global warming may be pushing polar bears to drowning, cannibalism:
The scattered reports are unproven, but expected given the climate shift, scientists say.

* Why good dancers are sexy:
A new study suggests good dancing may be sexy because it indicates bodily symmetry.

* Irresponsible in med school, in trouble as a doctor:
A study has found a strong link between irresponsibility in medical school, and professional misconduct later.

* Mirror, mirror: I still don't get it:
Humans have used mirrors daily for hundreds of years, but many of us still don't grasp the basics of how they work, a study has found.

* Researchers: mammoth genes nearly identical to elephant's:
Scientists report strides forward in sequencing ancient DNA.

Koufax Awards 2005 - nomination process is about to end

Nominations for Koufax Awards are going to be closed soon.

Read what it is all about, what are the basic criteria, who won the awards the previous three years and see already a lot of nominations in the comments here (you can see there who I nominated, too).

Then check who was also nominated in the additional comment threads here, here and here. You may get some ideas there....

Finally, go and post your nominations in the comments here.

Nominate your own blog, you best post, and best series. Rally your readers to nominate you a few more times. Suggest the names of your favourite commenters. Give a boost to your favourite blogs, especially the little ones in the categories of Deserving Wider Recognition and Best New Blog.

New category this year is Best State/Local Blog and the field is pretty thin - there are many great local bloggers in North Carolina focusing on stae or local issues - go and nominate them.

Every nominated blog will be looked at by a lot of people on the Center-Left of the political spectrum. Blogs (or posts, series, or commenters) nominated a few times will procede to the next level of voting.

So, go there, throw a couple of bucks in the Wampum tip-jar if you can (this is an expensive process!), check out the nominations and add some of your own.

Blogarithmicly - Special Dover Edition is up!

Blogarithmicly #6, carnival of link-harvests, is out, focusing entirely on the Kitzmiller case in Dover.

It's Over in Dover

Note: Moved to top and more links added!

Intelligent Design lost the case in Dover. I have not yet had time to read through the lengthy decision, but, as you can expect, some other bloggers are on the ball. So, check out their commentary:

Evolutionblog

Panda's Thumb, also here, here, here, here, here and here.

PZ Myers of Pharyngula, also here, here and here.

Carl Zimmer

Respectful Insolence

Josh Rosenau of Thoughts From Kansas

Unscrewing the Unscrutable

ACLU blog has some MSM links.

Buridan's Ass

Art of Teaching Science

Watauga Watch

Bad Astronomy

Hit and Run

Ed Cone

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

For more blog responses, check the Technorati search

Update:
Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority has assembled a huge collection of links into a kind of one-time Kitzmass carnival with links organized and commented on. This is your first stop in exploring this story!

Milkriverblog has also assembled a lot of links.

And here's some more from blogs I read a lot:

Matt Nisbett (also here and a promise of a big media coverage analysis for later today) Update: here is some more from Matt - really good: here, here and here.
Chris Mooney
Ed Cone (alsohere and here)
Michael Berube
Pandagon
Bad Astronomy
Archaeoastronomy
Buridan's Ass
Aetiology
Leiter Reports (also here)
Education Wonks
The Loom
Evolutionblog (also here)
Hit and Run
Brent Rassmussen
Dan Keane
Thoughts From Kansas (also here, here, here)
Red State Rabble (also here, here, here, here and here)
Panda's Thumb (also here, here, here, here, here, here)
Pharyngula
Orac
Radagast
Stranger Fruit
Math and Text
Scrivener's Error
Althouse
Coeruleus (She Flies With Her Own Wings)
Afarensis (also here, here, here, here and here)
Evolving Thoughts
Brendan Maher (also here)
Guide to Reality
Dispatches From The Culture War (also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here)
Cosmic Variance
Lippard Blog
Lancelet
The Commissar
A Concerned Scientist
The Art of Teaching Science
Science and Reason
Biblical Recorder Editor's Opinion

Ah, those barbarians from the Balkans!

Women seize power from lazy men

Women in a Croatian village have seized power from their lazy menfolk in local elections.
After their success, the women of Lozisca on the island of Brac vowed "to let the men back into our beds, but never back into politics".

Read the rest... (click on the title/link)
(Thanks Shakespeare's Sister)

Meriadoc [Brandywine] Brandybuck was right

Mustang Bobby: Raise the Shire!

Bark Bark Woof Woof! Essential reading of the day.

Skeptic's Circle

The latest edition of the Skeptic's Circle is up on Immunoblogging. Don't trust me on this. Go get the second opinion.

Grand Round Feminists

New editions of Grand Rounds and the Carnival of Feminists are now up.

Carnival of the Liberals #2

Carnival of the Liberals #2 is up on Neural Gourmet. Wonderfully done and ten great posts to read!

Carnival of Education

I have just posted Carnival of Education - The Winter Hibernation Edition on my other blog. It is huge (more than 40 posts!) and there is some really good stuff there to read. I'd also appreciate it if you sent your own blog readers to it.

Schools in Blogs, Blogs in schools

This is going to be long, but bear with me. I start with one specific course, than broaden the picture, muse a bit, meander somewhat, then ask some questions for which I would love some answers in the comments.

ColinMcEnroe's blogging class is over. They are supposed to turn in their final papers in hardcopy, but now that they are all bloggers in their own right, nothing comes more naturally to them than to post their papers on their blogs.

And they have written some fascinating things, some of which challenge the assumptions of old bloggers and professional blog-watchers. I strongly urge you to go and read their papers and post comments. Link to them - make them feel welcome into the blogosphere!

Let's start with Elin of Nileblog. She posted her paper in seven blogposts, well worth studying, as there are some surprising conclusions there:

The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part I) - Rhetoric
The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part II) - Science and Politics
The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part III) - Flu Wiki
The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part IV): Coffee Rhetoric Rhetoric
The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part V): Daily Kos
Rhetoric of Blogging (Part VI): Once more, with feeling
The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part VII): Closing thoughts on Nileblog

And yes, Nileblog will continue to exist in the future! Blogrolled!

Eric really took off with his blogging. He already has THREE blogspot blogs! One of which, this one, contains entirely the material of his blogging final paper about Links.

Shante also posted her paper on her blog: An exploration of the personal, and I hope she will continue blogging - she is a great writer.

Holly is a wonderful writer, but still nervous and shy about spilling everything out for everyone to read. She did, however, post her excellent paper on Creativity and Communication.

Jeff decided not to post the paper online, but appears that he will also continue with blogging. On the other hand, Dave of My Travels decided blogging is not for him and that's cool.

Screamin' Memey caught the blogging bug. That's the one to watch. No paper, though.... I believe that Semper Gumby was blogging even before the course started. It is an endless source of cool links to cool stuff.

Brett feels, perhaps of the whole class, most comfortable in the blogging medium - no qualms about posting the most personal stuff! But, where is the paper? Perpetual Perpetuity is on the roll! Also no paper.

Pangiuseppe decided mostly to comment on other people's blogs, but broke the silence to post this excellent final paper: Human Communication is Evolving in the Blogosphere.

Now, this guy's paper on 'metablognition' is of great interest to me, but it is not posted! Why? Has he moved to another blogging platform? Did this one also continue somewhere else? Both blogged regularly and then abruptly stopped. Strange...

Leon is running his own personal blog in Hungarian. But he did post his paper - RICHARD PRYOR AND SPEAKING THE TRUTH: On The Purpose and Voice of Personal Blogs - on his class blog.

I love this one! A blogger, blogging like a real pro, against blogging, but will consider continuing blogging, maybe, but probably not. Anyway, here's the term paper.

John of Jean DuBlog posted the results of his blogging ethics survey. Bill's Blither is an amazing blog. No paper, but who cares, this one stays on my blogroll.

Erin now feels free to blog on her own, now that the class is over and her paper is posted: Everyone's a Critic: Critical Thinking (or Lack Thereof) In the Blogosphere.

Something else happened in that class that is very interesting. Before the last class meeting, Colin had to warn them: "There's no crying in blog class!" And they sure cried. Dig through their blogs - especially the comments to posts in late December - to see for yourself. It is amazing how emotionally involved they got in this class. They all became fast friends. One is wondering why?

They believe this is because of a unique collection of fascinating individuals and the way they all clicked with each other. But is it really so unique? Or is it the fact they wrote their own and read each others' blogs that allowed them to get to know each other better than they would have if they just met on campus once a week for a semester? Does one's persona emerge on one's blog in ways that carefully managed image in real life cannot?

Now here's a thought: what if every class, from high school through grad school (with exception of humongous college freshman required classes that collect hundreds of students at a time), had a class blog and required students to keep their own blogs, write their assignments there, and post comments on each others' blogs? What would be good and bad consequences of such a practice if it became a norm?

Kids are already so used to being online. From AIM, XBoxLive and e-mail, through Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, to Xanga, AOL Blogs and LiveJournal, kids are definitely swimming through cyber-waters like fish.

Imagine starting in high school. Each teacher manages a class blog. Each student also runs a blog (perhaps on a platform that hides them from visitors outside of school). In each class, the class blog links to all the students and all the students link to the class blog and to each other. They are required to post their assignments on their blogs and to post links to those on the course blog. They are required to comment on each other's blogs and on the course blog.

We can assume that many students, just like the grad students in Colin's class, will also use their blogs to post stuff unrelated to class. Aware that teachers have access, they will probably heavily self-censor, but still, their true voice is likely to come out.

High school students come to school wearing a mask, an image they want to project. Freshmen in college do the same. But on their blogs, masks fall off. It is so hard to fake it online. See how Colin's students, at the very beginning of the course when they were still complete newbies, immediately lambasted XiaXue for being fake, and loved Coffee Rhetoric and Dooce for being genuine. The real persona eventually emerges.

If so many young students are uncomfortable being themselves in real life, but comfortable being themselves online, will their reading of each others' blogs help them get to know each other better, like each other better, become friends? Or is this going to be yet another tool to stir up trouble, gossip, form cliques and shun the outsiders?

Will a shy kid with great writing skills become popular? Will a popular jock be laughed at due to bad grammar and spelling? Would this be dangerous or wonderful for students' self-esteem?

How much would teachers have to learn how to monitor what is going on and interfere on behalf of victims? Would signs of depression, suicidal tendencies or aggressive intentions be detected earlier? How does one weigh pros and cons and thus organize the way this is all done?

How about college? There, each student would be a part of a number of blogging communities - one for each class they take. Will they care if they do not fit in with the engineering crowd but shine in a feminism class? How many blogging communities can one physically and mentally belong to before giving up on the whole thing?

How would mandatory blogging affect the level of reading and writing among the kids? If they know they are being read by classmates and teachers, will they try harder to write correctly? Will they become experts in detecting plagiarism on each other's posts, thus reducing its incidence overall?

Will discussions in comments sections raise the level and quality of thinking? We all know, as adults, how many heated discussions online end up with accusations of particular logical fallacies, e.g., ad hominem, red herring, slippery slope, etc. Will kids learn to recognize logical fallacies earlier if they are forced to comment on each others' blog early on in their careers? Will that positively affect the level of critical thinking? Will that prepare them better for their other college classes? Will that make them better citizens and better informed voters?

How would this affect the way teachers teach?

So, do you think it is possible to repeat the group cohesion effect of Colin's class in many other classes at difeferent ages and levels, no matter what the course subject is? Is that good or bad? Do benefits outweigh the risks? What other factors I am blind to? Comments are open.

More on "Republican War on Science"

DarkSyde interviews Chris Mooney on UTI (cross-posted on DailyKos).

Dr.Neiwert has an excellent post on the topic.

News: What A Day!

Evolution ruling expected

The federal lawsuit on intelligent design will likely chart the future of science education.

The National Law Journal Selects Plamegate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as 2005 Lawyer of the Year

Bush’s Snoopgate

The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.

Purposely misquoting FISA to defend the Bush Administration


FBI watched array of environmental, animal, and poverty groups


Closer look at Pentagon logs finds masked political requests from Republican Senate staffers


U.K. minister `lied over CIA flights`

God or Not

God Or Not #4 is up on The Goddess' blog.

Carnival of the Green

Carnival of the Green #7 is up.

Best Posts of 2005

Click on this:



...and suggest best individual blog posts of the year!

Anti-Darwinian Lunacy in America: View from Serbia

This op-ed appeared last Saturday in "Danas", the premier progressive magazine in Serbia. I have tried to quickly tranlate it, see below, but you can check the original if you click on the title/link.

I found it difficult to find English words juicy enough to truly convey the tone of this article. The Serbian word for "crippled", for instance, invokes an image of a screaming person, bloodied up, with stumps where limbs used to be just a minute ago. "Blinded" means almost literally "eyes dug out of the orbits with a dull knife". Even the choice of the word which I had to translate as "priest" is a derogatory one, at least it feel that way in a context like this. I wish an US paper would once, for a change, publish an editorial like this. Enjoy:

Anti-Darwinian Lunacy in America:

Judeo-Christian Fundamentalism

by Miroslav Mirko Simich
Danas, December 17, 2005.

It is undoubtedly true that we live in a world that is militarily, politically and ideologically dominated by America. First, it's because the USA possesses the largest and most technologically equipped militrary power. Second, because it is one of the most economically developed countries in the world. Finally, because today's Americans are, at least when inside their homes, historically proven advocates of democracy and promoters of the idea of human freedoms and rights. However, there is a question if American society possesses in everything, and particularly in science, qualities that qualify it to act as avant-garde of the modern world. As far as science is concerned, I personally think that it cannot, and here is why.

Darwin's theory of evolution is undoubtedly one of the most important, if not the most important, scientific discoveries for the entire humanity. It is most important because this discovery played a key turning role in dividing sciences of life and living beings, including humans, into those crippled and blinded by religious superstitions, primitive and reactionary, pre-Darwinian, and those modern ones, cleansed of religious dogmas, enlightened and progressive, post-Darwinian. Thus it is not surprising that Darwin's theory, from the very beginning, invited the wrath of priests and was denied, attacked, ridiculed and persecuted as satanic and godless by all churches. Today, though, it is clear to all educated people that without Darwin's theory, primarily because it triggered the acceptance of real scientific view of the world we live in, there would be no spectacular advances in modern biology, genetics, molecular biology and molecular medicine that we are witnessing almost every day. That is why citizens of all modern European democratic nations can, with no shame, no fear of God's punishment, and no compromise, learn and accept Darwin's teachings and all their consequences on the science of life. Even elementary school children learn about it in these adavanced countries.

In contrast, however, in today's America, studying, accepting and promoting ideas of Darwinism requires quite a dose of personal courage, which is paradoxical for the times we live in. Personal courage is needed primarily because modern America has recently been swept under a tsunami of aggressive, anti-scientific, judeo-christian fundamentalism. This resulted in just one out of four Americans believing today that life and all the living organisms are a a product of evolution and natural selection. In other words, large majority - about 225 million - of Americans today do not accept the truth that Darwin uncovered 150 years ago. Moreover, only a little less than half of 300 million Americans believe that God created all living beings and that they all looked at the tiem of creation the same way they look now. And he created them, so they believe, during six workdays, after which he rested from all that hard work on Sunday. This is as it is written for all time in Moses' Book of Creation. I know it is difficult to fathom this, but it is a fact that millions of Americans also believe that our planet is only a few thousand years old, not more than four to six thousand years!

On the other hand, hundreds of school boards, and even some educational insitutions around the country, started a witch-hunt on Darwin, sending "Wanted" anti-darwinian pamphlets in which, very cunningly, they put forward a pseudo-scientific concept of the so-called "Intelligent Design". According to that concept, complexity of life on our planet can be explained only on the basis of existence of some "supreme being" which "creates" organisms according to some kind of "intelligent plan". Of course this concept has no scientific value, but about this, at least as America is concerned, the judgement will be passed by a court in Pennsylvania early next year.

The concept of "Intelligent Design" appeared about 15 years ago and since then it represents the strategy of choice for the new generation of traditional biblical preachers throughout America. The concept is stunningly easily and broadly accepted by generally under-educated Americans, and has even broken into the public sphere. It was strongly endorsed and blessed even by George Bush during his electoral campaign for President in 1999. In one interview, among else, Bush told his voters: "I believe that God created the world. I think that we will keep finding more and more how that really happened."

Dangerous lunacy of Judeo-Christian fundemantalism in today's America is also reflected in a large number and variety of religious books displayed on the shelves of almost all big bookstores. In those, one can usually find tens of meters of various editions of the Bible and Torah, and tens of kilograms of thick tomes of Book of Mormons. However, particularly dangerous for healthy minds are numerous books of religious pseudoscience ranging from cosmology and atomic physics to biology and psychology in which "collapse of Darwinism and victory of Creationism" is "proven", not to even mention many books of religious fantasy with angels wielding atomic weapons.

Considering that since World War Two, American science has prospered and attained amazing discoveries, rewarded by many Nobel prizes, it is difficult to understand where this collective anti-scientific lunacy comes from. One of the reasons is surely the generally poor education, to large extent under the direct and significant meddling by various churches in education and upbringing, which Americans get. The second reason may be the belief of many Americans that their country possesses special qualities and that as such it differs from all the other countries in the world, which they take as a proof of their divine mission so they place rhetorical spirituality above objective science. Finally, today's anti-Darwinian craziness in America may represent a kind of recoil from reality, a type of revolt against one's own impotence in grappling with numerous problems we all encounter in the modern world. In any way, no matter what the underyling causes, the anti-scientific lunacy that dominates in America today, disqualifies the American society from a role as avant-garde of science in the modern world.

Author is an immunologist, professor of Belgrade University and memeber of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He currently lives in the UK.

It's not you, it's me....

I had to steal this from Anton. So that is why yelling at the Sitemeter does not work....

Balkanization of the Blogosphere

Now this is something for the Carnival of the Balkans! The Commissar used an old map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and turned it into a map of political blogosphere. If you go here you can hover your mouse over the map and click on towns and cities to get to various blogs.

Atrios is in aristocratic Vienna and Tbogg in lively Prague. Panda's Thumb has a whole Montenegro for itself - it is rough country to navigate. Dispatches From The Culture Wars is in Nish, one of the most enlightened cities in Serbia, while Orac is in Kragujevac, the site of one of the most brutal atrocities at the hands of the German Nazis during the WWII, and Pharyngula is in Prishtina (capital of Kosovo), the site of origin of ethnic cleansing and the target of a recent bombing by Dilbert. Have fun finding others. Where's Pandagon? I want to be Belgrade - after all, I was born there in real life!

Update: Thanks Herr Commissar, for placing me in my birthcity! There. I feel at home.

Carnivals - call for submissions

Last call for submissions for Carnival of Bad History, Carnival of the Liberals and Carnival of Education. All three appear this week (Wednesday or Thursday), so get your entries in ASAP.

Flambe....

Rejoice!

Circadiana reached 100,000 visits this morning. So now I have two (quite different!) blogs in six digits!

Who Will Buy Me This Book?

Just reissued: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Written in 1935, it was the first book written by an US author to be awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. It is chillingly current...

When Windrip is elected, all hell breaks loose. Dissent is crushed, the Bill of Rights is gutted, war is declared (on Mexico), and labor camps are established to help shore up Windrip's vaunted ''New Freedom,'' which is more like a freedom from freedom. All that's really left of the old America are the flags and patriotic ditties, which for many is more than enough. But to Lewis it's not entirely the fault of those who will gladly abide America's principles being gutted. The blame also falls on the ''it can't happen here'' crowd, those yet to realize that being American doesn't change your human nature; whatever it is that attracts people to tyranny is in Americans like it's in anyone else.

Read the rest of the review here.

(Hat-tip: Pacific Views)

Where's 'Politics' on "Science And Politics"?

[Note: moved to top for the readers coming over from Wampum blog - the Koufax nominations]

I have just realized I have not written a substantive political/analytical post in weeks!

People who come here and look down the front page will wonder why they were pointed here in the first place - whoever is recommending this blog as a cool Lefty political blog must be nuts!

And my Categories are at least two (now almost four months out of date) months out of date - automating categories is one function I wish Blogger would implement next!

Well, holidays, real life, laziness...whatever...no excuses!

Anyway, some people come here for the cool links, community building, personal posts, blogging about blogging, science links, blog carnivals, or whatever. But political analysis is what got this blog its first regular readers who told the others who told the others....So, to help the new visitors navigate, here is a sampling of what I think are some of my best political posts:

2004

Moral Politics in the Context of History of Marriage,
Conservative America
Safire's Reptilian Brain
Liberal Moral Core - Rush Limbaugh Version
Moral Order
How To Win Conservatives Over
War Of The Worlds
Political Brain
Nurturant Is Not Coddly
Top Ten Reasons Why I Will Never Be Elected Dogcatcher
Fires And Draughts Are Just God's Ways Of...
Four Horsemen Of Horse Race
God, Genes and Conservatives
Genocentrism Aids Anti-Abortion
How Bush Defeated Himself Tonight
Dred Scott And Other Code Words
Femiphobia
Why Are Postmodernists/Deconstructionists Liberal
Lakoff In Space And Time
Empire, Empiricism, Empowerment
Assault On Higher Education - Lakoffian Analysis
Bush, Frogs, Baboons, Horses
Strict Father Likes Some Of His Children More Than Other
Election Analysis 1: Exit Polls
My Feedback Message To DNC
Election Analysis 2: State Of The Union
Election Analysis 3: Temporal Trends
City/Country - What Is Exurb
Why Is Academia Liberal
Two Americas: Past, Present And Future
One Or Two Americas
Baby Gap
Science, Free Market and Is Lakoff Scientific
Great Men, History, And Science Education
Enslaving Women - Not Just Fundies
Great Men And Science Education, Take Two
I'm Gone Country, Part I
Rent Wars, It's Sex, Stupid
Hypocrisy Or Natural Order Of Things
Conservative Manly Men, What Are They Afraid Of
Conservatives Are Crazy And Dangerous
What About Them Libertahrians

2005

Perils Of Ideological Continua And Coordinate Systems
Why Creationists Need To Be Creationists
Hooked On Hooking Up
Ward Churchill, Who Cares
Femiphobia Again
Apart From Being An Idiot, Horowitz Is Also An Unwiped Anal Orifice With Hemorrhoids
Lakoff, Femiphobia and Writing On/For Blogs
Teen Sex, Hooking Up, Gay Marriage, Femiphobia
Religious Left and the Democratic Party
This is not about academic freedom
Regressives
Comparative Wingnuttery
Still Misunderstanding Lakoff
Reading List - American Politics
How Should We Call Them,
Babes in Politics
Public Park Parable of Political Psychopathology
Femiphobia Is Womb Envy
Femiphobia And Race
Books: The Postman by David Brin - chillingly current
The Good Father
Ann Coulter, Beauty, Beast, Rapunzel, Cinderella Or All Of The Above
Child Abuse, Horse Abuse, Wife Abuse, God Abuse - Conservative Pathology
Creationism Is Just One Symptom Of Conservative Pathology
New PBS Anchors: Louis XVI, Cesare Borghia and Cardinal Savonarola
Who Won WWII
I Want Bigger Government
Some Thoughts On Use Of Animals In Research And Teaching
On Lakoff, Religion and Language: The Rising Tone
Two Perspectives on Women in Star Wars
If only people read the Bible the way they read their contracts
Never Again
On Conservative Psychopathology
Nationalism is not Patriotism
Lefty and Righty excesses of pseudo-science
We The People
Sometimes You Just Don't Know
Warriors
Political Affiliation on Campus
Being Poor All The Way To The Bank
Blogging From The Outside
John Edwards Kind Of Day
Poverty In The Media
A Simple Explanation

There are other good ones, too. but for those, you'll have to dig through the Archives....

Carnival to watch...

The inaugural edition of the Carnival of Ohio politics is up. Battleground state - battleground carnival!

Podcastercon

I finally buckled and signed up for participation in the Podcastercon, to be held on January 7th here in Chapel Hill. You can find everything you need to know about it on the Podcastercon Wiki and get the fresh news about it on its blog. Attendance is free and you can see that many cool people have already signed up.

First, I need to put a sound card on this computer so I can go ahead and actually listen to some other people's podcats. Then I'll go to the conference and attend the morning session on how to do it - I hope they make it as simple as possible, not assuming that any of us are aware that the computer actually needs to be plugged into a sorce of electricity in order to work.

Then, I am most interested in the session on podcasts in teaching (the "course-casts"). I'll report from the meeting here, and then, who knows, you may even see a podcast here one day!

Your Elf Name Is...

Pixie Stocking Stuffer

Santa Claus - various versions

From this short article on the evolution of Santa Klaus, we see that Santa was first associated with Christmas Eve in 1821. That is not that long ago, historically speaking. Here's more on the origins of Christmas, and look around for more on the Christmas Tree, the reindeer and the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'.

This pastor says: "Santa Claus, in and of itself, can be a fun custom. Just don't call it Christmas!" St.Nicholas day is on December 6th. Read when and how it got moved to the 25th. Look around the site - the pastor has written several articles about Christmas, Santa Claus and the origin of the Christmas Tree. This short article is a rare one that implicates Coca-Cola advertising office for the popularity of the fat-old-red version of Santa.

Here is an illustrated guide to Santa Clauses of various eras and geographies and this is another short history of Santa in America.

Here, another pastor did research on the evolution of Santa, more pictures here, and you can read even more in book form.

For me, reading this was always fun - an engineering professor explaining Santa's allnighter feats. And here is how to track him.

There are many copies of "Physics of Santa Claus" on the Internet. Here's one copy. This one appears mutated. And this one, in full spirit of scientific investigation, begs to disagree.

Hey, I grew up loving New Year's Eve. It is to this day my favourite holiday. Why? Because where I come from, on New Years' Eve you have a party, you decorate the New Year's Tree, you eat great food, and Grandfather Frost (Deda Mraz) puts presents under the New Years' Tree. Of course, he arrived in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, and got down the chimneys although he is fat and old and wears a funny red suit. We all sent each other New Year's Greetings cards and told "Happy New Year" to each other well into January! So, who said that Santa has anything to do with Christmas?

Oy vey, I am still laughing!

This is what my wife brought home yesterday: Yiddish with Dick and Jane. I picked it up and read it out loud for the whole family and we could not stop laughing! I cannot possibly give it the review it deserves, but check out the readers' reviews. Here is the "official" review first:

"Dick and Jane are all grown up, and they're living in the real world-and it's full of tsuris (troubles). That's the premise of this hilarious little book, which functions both as a humorous tale and a genuine guide to a language with a sentiment and world view all its own. Jane is married to Bob and has two perfect children. Dick schmoozes with business people over golf: "Schmooze, Dick. Schmooze...." Their sister, Sally, who teaches a course in "Transgressive Feminist Ceramics," can see that life is not perfect, even though dear Dick and Jane cannot. Their mother has a stroke ("Oy vey, Jane," says Dick when he learns the news). Bob's best friend's wife is having an affair because the best friend himself is gay ("'Tom is more than gay, Sally,' says Dick. 'He is overjoyed.'... 'Oy Gotenyu oh, God help us,' sighs Sally.") And purse dealers take advantage of the gullible. The brief story is priceless, but the equally funny glossary is a great reference to which readers can return any time they need the right Yiddish word-or whenever they need to determine whether the jerk they just saw is a putz, a schmo or a schmuck."

Tar Heel Tavern

Tar Heel Tavern is up! Go on over to Ogre's place for your weekly dose of NC blogging. Next week, we'll meet at Pratie Place.

Science News

* Study traces Egyptians' stone-age roots:
A researcher says that using ancient teeth, he has learned who the Egyptians may have been before history.

* Hunt for the "glueball" may be almost over, physicist says:
Physicists have been searching for three decades for a bizarre subatomic particle called a glueball.

* Early dinosaurs had unusual growth abilities, study finds:
Some dinosaurs might have reached quite different adult sizes despite being from the same species, depending on conditions.

* Archaeologists unearth ancient "war zone" near Iraq border:
Archaeologists say they have found the earliest evidence for large-scale warfare near ancient Mesopotamia.

* Mural provides "window" into Maya origins:
The oldest well-preserved Maya mural provides a wealth of information on the civilization's origins, archaeologists say.

* Mysteries of early-aging syndrome unlocked, researchers say:
Understanding a condition that kills children by age 13 might benefit them, and the rest of us,
scientists believe.

Carnival of Education - call for submissions

Next week's Carnival of Education will be hosted by me over on Circadiana.

Posts have started to trickle in and I fully expect an avalanche the day before. If you are a teacher in preschool or graduate school or anywhere in-between, write something about it and send me the Permalink. Likewise, a student's perspective is appreciated.

Deadline is 5:00pm EST on Tuesday, December 20th and the carnival will be posted on Wednesday in the morning. Please send your entries to: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.

Last minute book shopping?

Perhaps it will help your brain-cells if you check out my Books category. I am thinking about putting some Amazon ads on here soon. Also, some (but far from all) links within the posts earn me a few pennies if you click on them and then buy something (not neccessarily the book I linked to) while there. I have also highlighted some good books about clocks and sleep on my other blog.

Dave Munger is Back!

Mungovit's End, my favourite libertarian blogger to kick around (because he is so darned smart, funny and snarky, as well as nice, unlike most of the others who muddy the waters of the blogosphere) is coming back on New Year's Day.

But, there's always a "but".... Unfortunately, the comments are, at least for now, limited to the members of the inside club. Ah, those libertarians, always open to free markets of ideas....

Mooney in papers and on the big screen

Chris Mooney's book Republican War on Science got a very positive review in New York Times today.


In even better news, the book will be turned into a documentary film by Morgan Spurlock, the director of "Super-Size Me". Check Chris Mooney's blog for reactions (and nominate it for a Koufax or two....).


Update: Here is an article about the movie deal from WaPo. More information about the book can be found here.

Blogs Burn Big Egos

Aha, so Maureen Dowd is too thin-skinned to read reviews of her writing on blogs. Well, if I have written her book, or that NYT Magazine piece based on it, I would hide, too. Use Technorati to see how thoroughly the blogosphere has fisked it.

Institutionalized

Yesterday I received my pre-print copy of Institutionalized by Fred Smith and Joe Schmoe (you can see their homepage here, but you cannot order through it - hit the previous link, and if you buy something I'll get a couple of pennies, too). I am ssuming the publishers found me through this blog and offered me a free copy, so, sucker for books as I am, I agreed. In return, they get free advertising from me (voluntary - they did not ask) which is, so far, not negative....

I am looking forward to reading a book with reviews like these on the back-cover:

"I HATED IT!"
Suzy Wetflower, BSU Business Review

"It's the worst piece of junk to come onto the market in 50 years."
Bobby Sludgeworm, New York Mail

"The writers should be taken out and shot to put us all out of our misery."
Bradley Sleeswart, Fibbes

"Ranks right up there with Construction Machinery's Annual Maintenance Almanac."
Adam Preston, Akron Today

"Trash it, burn it, but please don't recycle it."
Dan Butler, Transparency Protest Group

"Jack Squelch is in no way connected with this book and will sue anyone who says different."
Wallace, Albertini, Leroy, Donoghue & Rev.Brother Ben

"Actually, I thought it was quite nice."
Peter Duckworth, Unemployment Recipient, Surrey, UK

I think Peter Duckworth is onto something here.... It may take me a while to get to it, but I have a feeling it will be an enjoyable and fun read. I will certainly post my review here once I finish it.

Inspired Blogging....

Brett went to a speed date just so he could then blog about it! What should I do when lacking inspiration?

How to tip a cow

No, no, not 15% of the bill (or bull).



This is a much more serious matter of scientific debunking of a rural myth. (hat-tip: Semper Gumby)

Гугл

Do you need to transliterate from Latinic to Cyrillic script? If so, use Гугл (that is "Google" in Cyrillic script).

Typepad Refugees

While Typepad is trying to recover after a whole day of being down and still fixing images and comments, many of my favourite typepad bloggers have started a party at Typepad Refugees, a blogspot blog.

Everything you ever wanted to know about....

...hosting a blog carnival (but were too afraid to ask), you can now learn from Mike. You see, it's easy and fun and quite rewarding.

Blog Awards - it's that time of year

In spite of stiff competition by the Right Wing bloggers, a number of liberal blogs did quite well in the 2005 Weblog Awards. Click on that link to see the results and to follow the links to the actual blogs.

Congratulations to Daily Kos (#1), Eschaton (#2) and Talking Points Memo (#4) in the Best Blog Category; Yellow Dog Blog (#1) in the Best New Blog group; TPM Cafe (#4), Pandagon (#5) and MyDD (#7) in the Group Blog category; Jesus' General (#1) in the Best Humor/Comic Blog group; all 15 finalists in the Liberal Blog category (in order: AmericaBlog, TalkLeft, Wonkette, TBogg, Bitch, Ph.D., Matthew Yglesias, Informed Comment, World O'Crap, Feministe. The Liberal Avenger, Clareified, Ezra Klein, Rox Populi, The Reid Report and SRWU); Raw Story (#2) and James Wolcott (#3) in the Best Media/Journalist category; Pam's House Blend (#1) in the Best LGBT BLog category; Crooks and Liars (#1) for the Best Video blog award; Firedoglake (#1), Hullabaloo (#2) and Making Light (#5) in the Top 250 blogs; Sadly NO (#1) and Michael Berube (#2) in the Top 251-500 group; Roger Ailes (#1) and Needlenose (#2) in the Top 501-1000 group; and apparently, Blogger as the favourite blogging software, as well as all the others - great showing everyone!

Now go and nominate your favourites (especially little bloggers - you know Kos will get plenty of nominations!) for the Koufax Awards.

Do not forget to nominate yourself! Don't be shy. It is not just tolerated, but actively promoted! If you are a new or small blogger, you need to show off your stuff there to be noticed!

In order to appear in the semi-finals, a blog needs to be nominated more than once, so rally your readers to pitch in for you. I have already nominated more than my fair share of blogs and I wish I could add some more.

This year, the new category is Best State/Local Issues Blog. I can see from the nominations so far that people are not yet mentally ready for it - I see very, very few nominations so far in this category. North Carolina bloggers are well known for the local community blogging, so go ahead and nominate local bloggers who cover local or statewide issues (you can see who I have nominated, if you wish).

Update: Once you see who is nominated in the link above, go to the new thread here to post your nominations in the comments.

Update 2: Big thanks to Eric, Pam, Shake's Sis, Jenn (which one?), shegeek, Dr. Free-Ride, Greensmile, Katja, Robert, Lance, Susan and Jamie, for nominating this blog (and even Circadiana, which is eligible for New Blog category! Yee-haw!) for Kaufax Awards, mostly in the Blog Deserving Wider Recognition category. It is greatly appreciated.

Update 3: They have now opened the third thread for nominations.

Tar Heel Tavern over the holidays....

We have lined up three wonderful Tar Heel Tavern hosts for the holidays. I know everyone's busy, but please try to remember to send them your entries:

TTHT #43 (18 December 2005) Host: Ogre's Politics and Views

TTHT #44 (25 December 2005) Host: Pratie Place

TTHT #45 (1 January 2006) Host: The View From The Cheap Seats

TTHT #46 (8 January 2006) Host: YOU!!!!!?

Unique Christmas (and perhaps hannukkah) songs to download

Well, Jane is starting to podcast! This is what she wrote:

"Since I'm a little bit embarrassed by how crabby I've been about Christmas, starting tomorrow I'm going to post a beautiful Christmas song every day as an mp3 which you can download and enjoy - drawn from the several cds my various bands have made through the years. It's legal. Enjoy."

Check the songs out every day at Pratie Place.

Koufax Awards 2005 - nomination process has begun!

Nominations for the 2005 Koufax Awards are now open. Go nominate your favourites in a number of categories. Think hard, think fast, and nominate the best, not just the biggies, but also small blogs worthy of broader recognition, best posts, bests series, best commenters, etc. This year's new category is "Best Local Issues Blog" where North Carolinians should shine!

Teaching Carnival

Teaching Carnival #4 us up on New Kid On The Hallway. It's HUGE!

Tar Heel Tavern - we need a host!

Tar Heel Tavern needs hosts for this weekend and the Christmas weekend.

We have a host for New Year's Eve/Day, but we need hosts for the two intervening weekends? Any takers?

Since the second weekend from now is the holiday weekend (both Christmas and Hannukkah), the host can have some more flexibility about timing the carnival, ranging from Friday PM till Monday AM. Let me know at Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com if you want to host one of the next two weekends.

Update: Ogre will host this weekend. Anyone wants to do Christmas weekend? Perhaps we can just take a break....

Carnival of the Liberals - call for submissions

Carnival of the Liberals #2 is coming up next week on Neural Gourmet. Send your entries to:
cotl-submissions AT carnivaloftheliberals DOT com

Carnival of the Balkans

Carnival of the Balkans #5 is up on YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett. Go feast on the Southeastern European literary cuisine!

History Carnival

History Carnival #22 is up on Frog In A Well.

Take your education to the bank

Tangled Bank #43 is up on Rural Rambles and Carnival of Education #45 is up on The Education Wonks.

Next week's Carnival of Education will be guest-hosted by me over at Circadiana. Please send your entries to: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com. Deadline is 5:00pm EST on Tuesday, December 20th.

Cue the solemn music....

Diebold is going to be sued for securities fraud! (thanks Agitprop)

More details here (Brad Blog).

Sit back, watch and enjoy yet another juicy lawsuit...

Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds, not Ground Rounds, at In The Pipeline today.

Holiday Fun

Majikthise discovered a wonderful website about religion. She chose to quote from Kissing Hank's Ass, which is hillarious.

Look around the site. There is some cool stuff there, for instance Watchmaker about Intelligent Design, MUI about religious tolerance, and Interview With God which I reproduce in its entirety because I had no idea how to cut just a little piece out of it:

I dreamed I had an interview with God.

"So you would like to interview me?" God asked.

"If you have the time" I said.

God smiled. "We have until your alarm clock rings.
What questions do you have in mind for me?"

"What surprises you most about humankind?"

God answered...
"That by worrying about the afterlife,
they throw away their one real life,
sometimes literally by trusting prayer instead of medicine,
or flying a plane into a building full of infidels."

"That with thousands dead from an 'Act of God',
they flock to churches like flies to a bloated corpse."

"That with all their fantastic science,
and libraries full of great literature
they still think glurge like this is profound"

God's hand took mine
and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked...
"As a parent, what are some of life's lessons
you want your children to learn?"

"To learn that to make someone love you,
make them feel guilty for your sacrifices.
and if that doesn't work,
make their life hell."

"To learn to forgive by killing your own son,
but don't forget to blame the Jews."

"To learn that it only takes a few seconds
to kill those you love,
but three days to bring them back."

"To learn that a rich person
is not one who works hard,
but one who knows how to make a buck
off of cheap sentimentality like this."

"To learn that there are people
who say they love you dearly,
but really hope you burn in hell
because you have more sex than they do."

"To learn that two people can
look at the same thing
and see it differently,
but it takes religion
to make that into a long bloody war."

"To learn that it is not enough that they
forgive one another;
they must get a priest to do it."

"Thank you for your time," I said humbly.

"Is there anything else
you would like your children to know?"

God smiled and said,
"Just know that I am ... only a dream."

A commenter on Majikthise pointed to another website, with this hillarious piece that I should read to my kids, perhaps seriously...

Free Market: What Adam Smith Really Said

Long time ago I was arguing with someone about the free market. I was stating that Adam Smith was concerned with national, not individual wealth. Here is some more, in greater detail. This may help you in debates with so-called "free-marketers" out there.

Green Gift Guide

If you are interested in environmentally friendly holiday gift ideas, Heather has the goods.

Update: And here's how to wrap 'em.

Chocolate Cream-O-Wheat

Last time I wrote about breakfast. Here's dinner. I tried Cokolino, from my brother's package:

This is instant chocolate-flavored cream-o-wheat that kids of my generation loved. However, I never did, and tonight I got reminded why - it is just not as thick, dark and chocolatey as when I used to make it from sratch, from mik, sugar, bittersweet cooking chocolate like this one my brother sent me...


...and real cream-o-wheat, which he also sent:I'll try that tomorrow.

Teaching Evolution Successfully

The new article on PLoS, Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution by David Sloan Wilson, describes a successful experiment of teaching evolution to a broad segment of the student population at Bighampton College (the paper looks nicer in PDF format).

Here are just a couple of snippets:

The main problem with accepting evolution involves implications, not facts. Threatening ideas are like other threats—the first impulse is to run away or attack them. Make the same ideas alluring, and our first impulse is to embrace them and make them our own. Neither impulse is very respectable scientifically. After all, scientists are supposed to accept ideas when they are true, regardless of their consequences. Nevertheless, the key to making evolution a subject that anyone can understand and everyone should want to understand is to focus first on the implications.

---------snip-----------

It might seem that boldly discussing subjects such as human infanticide (which the students quickly connect to the contemporary issue of abortion), along with other topics such as sex differences and homosexuality later in the course, is the ultimate in political incorrectness. However, I have taught this material for many years in prior courses without a single complaint, and the assessment of “Evolution for Everyone” demonstrates an overwhelmingly positive response across the religious and political spectrum.

---------snip-----------

The important point is that evolutionary theory can potentially explain the evolution of behaviors associated with morality and immorality. This is vastly different than the usual portrayal of evolution as a theory that explains immorality but leaves morality unaccounted for. The average student is well aware that immoral behaviors usually benefit the actor, that human groups have a disturbing tendency to confine moral conduct to their own members, and so on. When evolutionary theory is presented as a framework for understanding these patterns in all their complexity, including the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly, it is perceived as a tool for understanding that can be used for positive ends, rather than as a threat.

You reaaly should read the whole thing, as it is informative, thought-provoking and almost exhilarating. No matter what prior education, strength of religious belief or political ideology the students (from a wide variety of majors) had prior to the course, they all had a positive experience, learned a lot, and understood both evolution in particular and scientific method in general much better than they did before the course.

Also, check out the course website for more information. One of the undergraduate students in the program finished his course project by having it published in Quarterly Review of Biology (pdf)!

I will definitely print this out and study it in detail in order to try to replicate it in the future.

teaching-carnival

All The News (Un)Fit To Print

From MeMo come news about rrstroom reader, your best newsfeed, located in the Thinking Room of your house. Read it and wipe.

All family members can use it, as a scale installed in the toilet seat informs the reader which feed to dispense. As well as which music to play. Perhaps in stereo. I am surprised that Playboy or Penthouse did not come up with this first. Do they even have RSS feeds?

Carnival of the Green

Carnival of the Green #6 is up on Jen's Green Journal.

Should you panic if you have multiple Blogspot blogs?

There is some discussion online (e.g., here, here, here and here) about Google Blogger deleting, with no warning, blogspot blogs. Apparently, they are targeting people who have multiple blogspot blogs that - what can be more natural - link to each other, as well as to outside sources. I understand that splogs may do the same, but many legitimate bloggers do that, too.

This blog, Science and Politics, is my main blog, where I post everything and anything I care about. Naturally, it links, both from the sidebar and from many individual posts, to all the other blogs I have.

Circadiana is a place focused narrowly on science. It also links here and to a couple of others.

I have another blogspot blog that I use as Archives, mainly as a repository of the Blogroll, Links, Categories, some images, and other stuff that Blogger does not have figured out yet how to do. You can imagine how much incestuos linking goes on there, by the very nature of that blog.

I also blog at a couple of group blogs, namely Idea Consultants and Carolina Blog Consultants. Both link back here.

I am a member of the Liberal Coalition and the Circle of Science Assessment - both link back here and/or Circadiana.

I am co-managing the homepages of two blog carnivals: Carnival of the Balkans and Tar Heel Tavern, the latter one also having a separate blogspot blog for its complete archives. All three, naturally, link back here.

Finally, I have two blogs I made to experiment with, but rarely have time to do much with: Chronobiology and The Magic School Bus. Both link back here.

Should I worry? Especially now that I have just linked to all of them once again?

The Blogger support stuff is notorious for not responding to questions. I have sent them one a few minutes ago, just in case, as a precaution. I'll let you know if and when they respond.

What do you think? Are those a couple of mistakes they made while cleaning up splogs? Is it an automated function that is incapable of discriminating between splogs and legitimate blogs? Were these deleted blogs flagged by nasty individuals? Why would they think that cross-linking and out-linking is an indication of something wrong when that is the essence of blogging?

No, I am much more barbaric....

You Are French Food

Snobby yet ubiquitous. People act like they understand you more than they actually do.

French?! I guess they did not have Serbian on the menu... like pig on a spit, marinated and fried stallion testicles, ...or all that other stuff I've been blogging about lately....

(Hat-tip: Rana)

More Edible Nostalgia

Continuing to explore the food package my brother sent me the other day....

For dinner last night I had tuna fillets in vegetable oil (along some other stuff I already described before, e.g., proscuitto, liver pate and roasted red peppers):
I have also discovered, by finding many empty wrappers, that somebody in the family likes the hazelnut caramels:
But the main thing...oh, let me start from the beginning....

I was a very slow eater as a kid. Also a picky eater (though, compared to my kids, I was an angel). So, whatever I liked, I ate again and again and again. For years, my breakfast consisted of two slices of nice fresh white bread, spread thickly with rosehip jam.

After I arrived in the USA I could not find rosehip jam anywhere. I looked and I looked and I looked. One day, I discovered one, made in Switzerland. I bought a little jar and tried it, but it was so bland and tasteless...yuck!

A few years back, I went to visit my brother in Chicago. There was a great Eastern European store in the neighborhood, so we stocked up on a lot of nostalgic goodies, including the rosehip jam. If I remember correctly, I bought one jar to bring home, too. That was a long time ago.

Recently, I discovered that local Southern Seasons carries an Austrian brand. A little acidic, but good enough that I am now on the third jar. Then, last time I went there, I found a Hungarian brand that is even better. But that is only because enough time passed for me to forget what the REAL thing tastes like.

Then, the REAL thing, made in Croatia, showed up in the package. The jar looks like this:
I went and bought some really nice bread for the occasion. Then I made a whole big ceremony of opening the jar. The lid came off and I was enveloped in the most beautiful scent of my youth. I spread it really thickly over bread. And, to make the experience as reminiscent of childhood as possible, I fixed hot cocoa to go with it, too:
Did I mention that I have my own, very complicated and ritualistic way of fixing hot cocoa? Ah, what a breakfast I had....!

Not Charlotte, NC, ...the arachnid one...

Koufax Awards

I hope you are warming up your fingers by voting for your favourites in the 2005 Weblog Awards every day, because something much bigger is brewing. The good folks at Wampun are warming up their engines (and servers) for the next Koufax Awards. Start thinking about blogs you like in various categories, so you can nominate them once the whole thing begins.

Tar Heel Tavern

Big Round Numbers!

Science and Politics Site Summary
VISITS
	Total	100,000
	Average Per Day	357
	Average Visit Length	2:03
	Last Hour	13
	Today	109
	This Week	2,501
PAGE VIEWS
	Total	167,042
	Average Per Day	527
	Average Per Visit	1.5
	Last Hour	20
	Today	181
	This Week	3,689

I was hoping for a really spectacular 100,000th visitor, but it is someone from an unknown country, via Google, searching for "srbovanje", which led that person to the latest edition of the Carnival of the Balkans. I wish I knew who the person was:

Science and Politics By Referrals > Visit Detail Visit 100,000
		[>>]
Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		87.116.184.# (Unknown Organization) 87.116.184.235
ISP		Unknown ISP
Location		Continent : Unknown Country : Unknown Country Lat/Long : unknown
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution : 1024 x 768 Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit		Dec 11 2005 12:52:35 pm
Last Page View		Dec 11 2005 12:52:35 pm
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...zilla:en-US:official
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		srbovanje
Visit Entry Page		http://sciencepoliti...al-of-balkans-2.html
Visit Exit Page		http://sciencepoliti...al-of-balkans-2.html
Time Zone		UTC+1:00 CET - Central European Time
Visitor's Time		Dec 11 2005 6:52:35 pm
Visit Number		100,000

Carnival of the Godless

Sport...on this blog!?! Sure, why not

The World Cup Finals 2006 (if you don't know it's soccer, move on to the next post) is coming close. The draw has just occured, directly observed by viewers in 145 countries around the world, thus starting six months of endless backseat strategizing.

I am not a crazed soccer fan, but World Cup is the biggest sporting event after the Summer Olympics (Guess what is the third? If you said Winter Olympics, you are wrong. It's the World Equestrian Games!) in terms of numbers of countries, individual competitors, audience on site and TV audience. So, I'll be sure to watch at least some of it next summer.

The US team faces Italy, Czech Republic and Ghana. A tough group. Italians and Czechs are top European teams, both have been European Champions, and Italy was a World Champion before. Even Ghana must be good as it beat all other African teams in order to qualify.

The toughest group, at least according to this online poll, is Group C, consisting of Argentina, Netherlands, Serbia & Montenegro and Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Argentina is a multiple World Cup Champion and plays tough, no-nonsense soccer at the limits of what's legal (lots of yellow cards for them all the time). They love to finish their games with 0:0, then beat their opponents with penalty kicks (if I remember correctly, they did that three times during the 1990 World Cup). The Dutch are always one of the best European teams.

After years of sanctions, and more years in the doldrums bringing up the young team, Serbia has not lost a single match in the qualifications and has received only one goal total (from Spain), thus qualified at the top of its qualifying group. And whoever qualifies from Africa is bound to be in good form. Still, even at the hight of its form, as a team drawing talent from the whole country before it broke up into several smaller pieces, Yugoslavia could not beat Argentina (one of those victims of penalty kicks). It's going to be fun to watch.

Croatia plays its first game against the reigning Champion, Brazil, but the other two teams - Japan and Australia - should not be that hard to beat. Croatia is also in great form this year, also ending the qualifications on the top of their group.

It will be a fun summer.

Introducing The World's First Blogging Mule

How I Saved Christmas... Sorta by Jack T. Mule.

Hillarious!

How to automate Categories in Blogger?

A regular reader here, Mary Ann, figured it out! Seeing that I am two months behind on updating categories....again...I may consider trying her system. Of course, as soon as I get it implemented, the Blogger crew will come up with automated Categories...or so I hope...

Is it Correlation or Causation, one wonders....

From Corrente Wire I learned that I should not be afraid to go in the woods around here as it is not likely I will bump into a feral hog or a Bush voter. Lambert reports on a New Yorker article that, among else says this:

The presence of feral hogs in a state is a strong indicator of its support for Bush. Twenty-three of the twenty-eight states with feral hogs voted for Bush. That’s more than four-fifths; states that went for Kerry, by contrast, were feral-hog states less than a fifth of the time.
The solidly feral-hog South was, of course, solidly for Bush. The small islands there without wild hogs—Little Rock, Raleigh Durham—voted for Kerry.

And in Chapel Hill/Carrboro area, I guess it's hard to find even the domestic kind....After all, Kucinich won the primaries here, and Kerry destroyed Bush in 2004....

Science News

* Bees can recognize human faces, study finds:
Honeybees may look all alike to us. But we don't
necessarily look all alike to them.

* Beethoven's wish fulfilled:
Researchers say they have fulfilled Beethoven's wish
that his remains be used to learn what caused his
fatal illness. Their answer: lead.

* How the 'trust hormone' works:
A brain chemical that boosts trust seems to work by
damping connections in brain circuits that process
fear, a study suggests.

I should start paying attention to more than text content on blogs....

This blogger in this comment said something I never though of before:

"As for your blog style, start by finding something that will stop crashing my browser. After that, go into your closet and examine your clothing. Find the 3 colors that you wear the most and start there for a color scheme. It'll likely reflect you more than what you have now."

The host complied. Then I looked at my blog, then I looked at my favourite sweater that I had on at the time I was reading this, and was struck by something. You can see the sweater here and here.

Isn't that strange that I would pick the same colors for my template and my sweaters? Earth colors...like Al Gore...

Robert Sheckley Died

Great Science Fiction writer died on Friday, December 9, 2005. You can find some of his stories online.

Carnival of Bad History - call for submissions

Fifth edition of the Carnival of Bad History will be held on Neural Gourmet on December 22nd. Click on that link for more information about submissions. Send your submissions to:
theneuralgourmet AT neuralgourmet DOT com

Upcoming Blog Carnivals

The Tar Heel Tavern (blog carnival of North Carolina bloggers) will be hosted by Anonymoses this Sunday. Send your entries to:
baruchthescribe AT yahoo DOT com

Carnival of the Godless, exploring religion from a godless perspective, is due to appear - poof - out of nothingness this Sunday on Unscrewing the Inscrutable. Send your entries to:
cotg-submission AT brentrasmussen DOT com

Carnival of the Green, dedicated to protecting the environment, will next be held at Jen's Green Journal on Monday, December 12th. Send your green notes to:
carnivalofgreen AT gmail DOT com

Grand Rounds, carnival of medicine, nursing and healthcarem will be up on 12/13/05 hosted by In the Pipeline. Send your prescriptions to:
derek-lowe AT sbcglobal DOT net

The Tangled Bank, the blog carnival covering science, nature, environment, medicine and the intersection of science and society, will appear on Wednesday, 14 Dec 2005, on Rural Rambles. Send your entries to:
host AT tangledbank DOT net

Carnival of Education will be held at The Education Wonks on Wednesday, December 14th. Send your entries to:
owlshome AT earthlink DOT net

Carnival Of The Balkans will shine in all its languages on YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett on December 15th. Send you entries to:
QueenKatarina2000 AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk

History Carnival is arriving on 15 December at Frog in a Well. Send your posts to:
dresner AT hawaii DOT edu

Carnival of Bad History is still looking for a host!!!! It should be appearing on December 15th, but it can be moved back by a week or so if needed.
Update: Neural Gourmet has signed up as a host. Watch this space for more information regarding exact date, contact information, etc.

Carnival of the Liberals will appear on Neural Gourmet on Thursday, December 21. Send your entries to:
cotl-submissions AT carnivaloftheliberals DOT com

The next Carnival of the Feminists will be at Scribblingwoman on December 21. Send your unsubmissive submissions to:
jones AT unbsj DOT ca

Next Skeptic's Circle is coming to Immunoblogging on December 22rd. Send your debunking entries to:
odojo450 AT gmail DOT com

Next I And The Bird will be on 12/22/05 on Woodsong. Send ornithological entries to:
michiganbirder AT cmsinter DOT net

If you are into invertebrates, next Circus of the Spineless will appear on Bootstrap Analysis on New Year's Eve. Send your creepy-crawly entries to:
nuthatch DOT ba AT gmail DOT com

Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions

This week The Tar Heel Tavern will be hosted by Anonymoses. Send your entries to
baruchthescribe AT yahoo DOT com

For your reading pleasure

Unmasked!

India’s rationalists are on the frontline of the battle between science and superstition. Caspar Melville reports on their fight to debunk ‘holy men’

An Atheist Manifesto:

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

What is science? First, magnetise your wine ...

People often ask me [pulls pensively on pipe] "what is science?" And I reply thusly: science is exactly what we do in this column. We take a claim, and we pull it apart to extract a clear scientific hypothesis, like "homeopathy makes people better faster than placebo" or "the Chemsol lab correctly identifies MRSA"; then we examine the experimental evidence for that hypothesis; and lastly, if there is no evidence, we devise new experiments. Science.

Skeptic's Circle #23

I have just posted the newest, 23rd edition of The Skeptic's Circle on my other blog, Circadiana.

Skeptic's Circle is a blog carnival where bloggers dissect examples of pseudoscience, nonsense, quakery, foolishness, gullibility, irrationality and superstition.

Please go there and check out the best of the skeptical blogosphere. I also hope, if you are a blogger, that you will send your readers there, too.

And I also hope, once there, that you will look around Circadiana, a blog dedicated to the biology and medicine of circadian rhythms and sleep.

Finally, a related carnival, Carnival of Bad History, is in need of a host. Are you the one? Let us know.

I And The Bird #12

I and the Bird #12: The Canterbirdy Tales is up on Search And Serendipity. It's in iambic pentameter (OK, I don't know, but it is poetic). Chirp. Chirp.

Carnival of Feminists #4

Fourth edition of the Carnival of Feminists is up. Each time it seems to be getting better and better.

Science News

* Dog genome published:
The information helps explain why dogs are so diverse, and their relationship to humans, according to scientists.

* Men and women differ in brain use, study finds:
The comedians are right; the science proves it, researchers say.

* Study: marital stress slows wound healing:
The findings could have major implications for hospitals and health insurance companies, the researchers claim.

* Jungle find opens 'new chapter' in Maya history:
Archaeologists are reporting the earliest known portrait of a woman from the Mayan civilization.

* Are schools making kids fat?:
U.S. schools that allow frequent snacking, offer junk food and hold bake sales have more overweight students, a study has found.

* Earth-friendly grenades proposed:
Scientists say the little bombs could be designed to go easy on the environment.

Olduvai George

If you have not blogrolled it yet, take a look at Olduvai George right now, and I bet you'll do it in a hurry. Famous science illustrator started a blog a few days ago, posting his pictures, telling us more about the subjects (often extinct mammals) and explaining the methodology of drawing and painting - what it took to make each of these pieces of art. An amazing blog!

Framing Science Blog

Matt Nisbet has a blog. Framing in Science. That is the kind of blog that my blog should have been if I wasn't a lazy bum.

Carnival of Education

The Science Goddes is hosting this week's edition of the Carnival of Education.

Miracle Whip, Miracle Grow...

The "Miracle" edition of God Or Not is up on Evangelical Atheist.

Yummy!

Here's more content of the package I got from my brother.

Last night, Mrs.Coturnix fixed a delicious roast with mashed potatoes, mushrooms and baby peas. In addition, we opened a jar of Roasted Red Peppers:
No match to the kind my mother makes, but still good!

In other news, my children have discovered another item in the box that they like: the Animal Kingdom (Zivotinjsko Carstvo) chocolates. I have no idea if they still make the album, but each little chocolate still contains a card/sticker with a picture of an animal.

Since I was a kid, only the delicious taste of the creamy chocolate remains the same, everything else is changed. The wrapper used to always be dark purple, now it comes in a variety of light collors. The style of pictures is also different. And the pictures are actually self-adhesive now (we used to have to use glue to place our pictures into the album). That album was very good - at a very young age I learned everything about Volvox!
In the meantime, my wife and I are gorging ourselves on "Domacica" biscuits. Back in the old days, we used to buy at least one box (each box weighing 1 kilogram!) for each day we were going to spend at a horseshow. Usually the showgrounds and stables are not located in the vicinity of a grocery store. Sure, there were food vendors at horseshows with hamburgers, hot dogs and other stuff, depending on the location (I still remember the delicious Gypsy-style steaks sold at a show in Bratislava, Slovakia), but what do you eat the day before the show opens, or at night? Well, of course, Domacica. We also shared with other hungry people at the stables. Soon enough, the habit spread, and by the end of the first show season, every single Yugoslav equestrian club brought Domacica to every show.

Grand Rounds in the Examining Room

Dr.Charles has posted the latest issue of the Grand Rounds.

While you are at his blog, you may consider ordering his book, a collection of blog-post stories he published with Lulu.com and I am assuming is in the running for the Blooker Prize.

Skeptic's Circle - last call for submissions

Next edition of the Skeptic's Circle will be posted on December 8th, 2005 on Circadiana. Send your entries by midnight EST on December 7th to Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com

A Pyramid in Bosnia?

There is no resolution to this story as of today, but it will be interesting to watch as this story unfolds. For now, let me say I am a bit skeptical, and I invite the readers with expertise (archaeologists, for instance) to chime in.

From BBC, comes this (a couple of months ago):

Bosnia's leading Muslim daily Dnevni Avaz writes excitedly about "a sensational discovery" of "the first European pyramid" in the central town of Visoko, just north of Sarajevo. Excavations at a hill site above the town have been going on for several months and initial analyses "have confirmed the original claim that this is Europe's first pyramid and a monumental building, similar in dimensions to the Egyptian pyramids."
"The pyramid is 100 metres high and there is evidence that it contains rooms and a monumental causeway ... The plateau is built of stone blocks, which indicates the presence at the time of a highly developed civilisation," the daily explains.
"Archaeological excavations near the surface have uncovered a part of a wall and fragments of steps," it reveals.
"Visocica hill could not have been shaped like this by nature," geologist Nada Nukic tells the daily. "This is already far too more than we have anticipated, but we expect a lot more from further analysis," she concludes.

Note the wording "there is evidence" about the structures inside the hill. Also, note Nada's Mt.Rushmore analogy. Also note that the name of the discoverer is not mentioned.
UNJOURNALED blog adds Pyramid found - in the heart of Bosnia!!:

Near the city of Visoko, 30 km north of Sarajevo, there is a stone pyramid of monumental size, claims the Bosnian archeologist Semir Osmanagić, who lives and works in the USA. After several months of geological and archeological research, Mr. Osmanagić concluded that under the present hill of Visočica hides a stairs-like pyramid, about 12,000 years old. Osmanagić, who intensively researched on pyramids in Americas, Asia and Africa for the last 15 years and wrote several books on the subject, says he's quite sure he found the first pyramid in Europe, which is quite similar to ones in the Southern America.
He believes that the project would completely change Bosnia's significance in the world of archeology. On the top of "Bosnian pyramid of Sun" was a temple, built by pre-Illyrians, people who lived, according to Osmanagić, 27,000 years ago. Mr. Osmanagić thinks he will solve the "Bosnian pyramid of Sun" in the next five years, but also prove the existence of "Bosnian pyramid of Moon", lying under the neighboring hill of Križ.

Note that Osmanagic is identified as an archaeologist. I could not find his institutional website or any other information apart from the articles on this fresh piece of news. Also note that he has published books about this (or other stuff?) already. How does the pyramid already have a name? Since when? Who gave it a name - Osmanagic? Why think there is a second one?
BurakEldem answers one of the questions - Osmanagic has published a book on this particular pyramid and it appears that he gave it a name:

A US-based Bosnian independent researcher, Semir Osmanagic claims in his new published book "The Bosnian Sun Pyramid" that a 700 meters high hill near Sarajevo was actually the oldest known pyramid of the world. According to Osmanagic, archaeological researches has already revealed some sandstone slabs 5 meters below the surface. He recalls the German archaeologists' latest findings of 7000 years old artifacts near the hill. He claims that the "Bosnian Pyramid" dated back 12 thousand years and had same characteristics of the famous Step Pyramid of Saccara. Another Bosnian scientist, Nada Nukic (a geologist) supported his claims by stating that the structure of the hill could hide some "man made" buildings.

Note that Osmanagic is here refered to as "independent researcher". While some of those are legitimate, usually this moniker indicates a person who cannot be employed by a serious institution, due to that person's quakery. I am not saying anything about Semir yet, but we should be careful.
Archaeoblog is reasonably skeptical:

We're rather suspicious of this since the researcher is claiming the thing to be anywhere between 12-27k years old (hard to tell which from the text). Since this generally flies in the face of previous evidence, we predict it will probably blow over within a few months.

A new article from AP came out yesterday: Scientist: Bosnian hill may have pyramid

Scientist: Bosnian hill may have pyramid
By Aida Cerkez-Robinson, Associated Press
VISOKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — With eyes trained to recognize pyramids hidden in the hills of El Salvador, Mexico and Peru, Semir Osmanagic has been drawn to the mound overlooking this central Bosnian town.
"It has all the elements: four perfectly shaped slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a flat top and an entrance complex," he said, gazing at the hill and wondering what lies beneath.
No pyramids are known in Europe, and there is no evidence any ancient civilization there ever attempted to build one.
But Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who has spent the last 15 years studying the pyramids of Latin America, suspects there is one here in his Balkan homeland.
In this week's story, Dan Vergano explains why it may have been better to be the hunted rather than the hunter for humanity's ancestors.
"We have already dug out stone blocks which I believe are covering the pyramid," he said. "We found a paved entrance plateau and discovered underground tunnels. You don't have to be an expert to realize what this is."

Here, he is again refered to as archaeologist. Archaeological News also notes this:

An earlier article called Semir Osmanagic an amateur archaeologist and adventurer. This one calls him a scientist and an archaeologist.

And he claims to have dug out the tunnels. He is personally financing this:

Osmanagic, 45, who now lives in Houston, is personally financing excavations at the Visocica hill, a 2,120-foot hump outside Visoko, a town about 20 miles northwest of the capital, Sarajevo.
He learned about the hill in April from Senad Hodovic, director of a museum devoted to the history of Visoko, which is rich in Bronze Age and medieval artifacts. Hodovic had attended a promotion of an Osmanagic book about ancient civilizations and thought he would like to see Visoko's pyramid-shaped hill.
When the pair climbed the hill, the sweeping view revealed a second, smaller pyramid-shaped hill. It reminded Osmanagic of pairs of pyramids he has seen in Latin America that together create a gateway into a valley.
After obtaining a permit to research the site, which is protected by the state as a national monument, the first probes of the main hill were carried out this summer at six points. Nadja Nukic, a geologist involved in the research, said she found 15 anomalies suggesting that some layers of the hill were manmade.
"We found layers of what we call 'bad concrete,' a definitely unnatural mixture of gravel once used to form blocks with which this hill was covered," Osmanagic said.

So, they are actually doing some work more than just walking up and down the hill. Interesting new twist - the hill itself is natural, but modified by humans:

"The hill was already there," he added. "Some ancient civilization just shaped it and then coated it with this primitive concrete — and there you have a pyramid."
Small-scale excavations continued until early November, when winter set in, with the work focusing on what Osmanagic theorizes may have been the entrance to a pyramid-shaped temple.

Osmanagic has big theories about this:

Osmanagic believes the hill was shaped by the Illyrian people, who inhabited the Balkan peninsula long before Slavic tribes conquered it around A.D. 600. Little is known about the Illyrians, but Osmanagic thinks they were more sophisticated than many experts have suggested.
Nukic, who has walked up and down the hill several times, said she noticed symmetrical platforms in the slopes — indentations that Osmanagic believes are steps built into the pyramid.
A local businessman who bought a lot at the foot of the hill and brought in a bulldozer to dig the foundation for a house, meanwhile, unearthed manmade sandstone plates that the archeologists think may have been paving stones.
Anthropologists say the Visoko valley already offers ample evidence of organized human settlements dating back 7,000 years. The town was Bosnia's capital during the Middle Ages, and German archaeologists working the valley recently found 24,000 Neolithic artifacts just three feet below the surface.

Archaeoblog comments succinctly:

Still needs work.

This passage is fine:

Osmanagic is taking a cautious approach about the hill.
"No fast conclusions, please. The evidence has to be firm, at least beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

But he does like his theory:

"Not that I don't believe in a pyramid here," he added. "This place was always called 'Pyramid' by the local population. But we have to prove that this is not a natural shape."
He thinks, however, that the shape of the hill speaks for itself.
"God can make many things, but such perfectly geometrically formed slopes, pointing exactly toward the north, south, east and west — if he did that, well, that's phenomenal itself."

Mt.Rushmore versus New Hamshire's Old Man again.
You can see, if you are interested, more pictures and a video.

(Thanks to Katja for tipping me on this story)

Update: There is more information here, here and here.

Carnival of Liberals

Carnival of the Liberals Number 1 is up. Go celebrate!

Carnivalesque #11

Carnivalesque is a carnival that alternates between Ancient/Medieval History and Early Modern History. This month, it is the Ancient and Medieval edition, up on Blogenspiel. Now, that is a true academic carnival!

Me, under the microscope!

Ha! I knew this was going to happen! One of the students in Colin McEnroe's blogging course has written an analysis of my blog. I think it is pretty accurate, but I am biased. I left three long comments in my "defense" there. Go check it out and let her and me know what YOU think.

What have we learned from the Deignan affair?

Do you remember Paul Deignan? I know, I know, it's been ages since that affair blew up and ended and we have all moved on with our lives. I do not fault you for being sick and tired of it and not at all interested in revisiting these stale news. But I have to. Please bear with me. Let's see first if it is actually over yet, and second, what we can learn from it.

First, let me try to think through the various reasons why I was interested in the whole sordid affair in the first place. After all, flame wars have been going on online for many, many years. Remember the horrors of Usenet? What made this case different, and why was I personally fascinated by it?

Why did I follow the Deignan story?

A) I am human.

Fallible. This was watching a trainwreck happen. I could not help but gawk. Guilty as charged.

B) This is the era of Ivan Tribble editorials (and rebuttals).

I am myself hoping for a job in academia one day, so the whole issue of blogging affecting one's academic career and job prospects is very interesting to me. And it is far from being resolved. The fact that Dr.Hettle notified Deignan's advisor made this an interesting test case of the whole notion. Fortunately for Paul, his advisor is not Internet savvy and he ignored the whole issue. Future employees may or may not act the same - only time will tell. I certainly would not like someone to snitch to my advisor, although I am sure that my advisor would dismiss the whole thing, too. The Deignan affair certainly stirred the discussion anew and prompted a couple of interesting blog posts on the topic. How does one's online behavior translate into and result in real-life repercussions offline?

C) Memes.

As a blogger and someone who often thinks and writes about the blogosphere, it was fascinating to watch how the name Deignan, sometimes capitalized, sometimes not, quickly started being used as a shorthand for describing a whole, complex suit of behaviors that Paul exhibited during the affair. Watching a birth of a meme! Fascinating! I have seen it used (and used myself, too) as a noun, e.g., "don't be a deignan", or "to pull a deignan", and also as a verb: "to deignan". I doubt this will last very long as the number of people aware of the whole thing is relatively small, but still, what a way to get immortalized! Like Goodwin's Law! Who's Goodwin, btw? The meme leaves behind and transcends the person and takes a life of its own.

D) I am deeply interested in blogging as a social phenomenon.

Internet has grown organically, and blogosphere has grown, if possible, even more organically. There are no written rules of ethics and conduct. There are, however, unwritten rules - a Code of Honor of sorts. Whenever somebody breaks the code, the person gets ostracized by the rest of the blogosphere. By taking the offline squabble out into the real world, by threatening to out an anonymous blogger, and by seeking redress in court, Deignan has broken some of the most important elements of the Code of Honor and is, thus, rightfully ostracized. His later suggestion that people flag BitchPhD's blog is the most disgusting example of unethical behavior I have encountered. Spam blogs are a real problem. Trivializing the effort to fight splogs by flagging legitimate sites one disagrees with is the lowest of the lowest form of internet behavior.

It is extremely important for the rules of online conduct to be formulated by the online participants themselves. These rules have evolved over time to encompass rules of behavior that all the participants can abide by and gladly abide by. Imposing rules from the outside is doomed to fail. Thus, shouting matches, direct personal insults and use of profanity are not just tolerated, but are almost a norm of online discourse (differs in degree from site to site, of course). Newbies may find the experience jarring and may take some time to grow a thick skin, but we've all been there and we try to be understanding.

Taking this case to the courts is potentially very dangerous. Not just to any of the individuals involved, but to the future development of the blogosphere. A bad ruling by an ignorant judge can set the precedent with a chilling effect on the freedom of speech on the Internet. This is not a Left or Right issue, not even a political issue. This is the issue of NOT allowing the outside world to get a foot in and start regulating the blogs.

Blogosphere is supposed to be self-regulating. This also means that ALL spats are resolved online. Having a court decision written down somewhere out there can have seriosuly negative consequence on the future of blogging. If it happens in Deignan's case, it will not be liberals but ALL bloggers who will be extremely mad at Paul for what he has wrought to the whole world of blogging, for generations to come, decades after we are all dead.

E) Related to that last sentence just above, it was also fascinating to watch the responses from the Left and responses from the Right.

First, from the Left. Bitch PhD is one of my favourite bloggers. I check her blog relatively often - I'd say a couple of times a week. I admire her as a blogger and as a person. That said, her blog is not one of my first-thing-in-the-morning places to go and I am not a regular on her comment threads (check my blogroll). I have posted a comment there probably less than ten times over the past several months since I first discovered it. So, I missed the whole initial thread on which the fight happened.

Still, when she was threatened by Deignan it was just natural that we would all come to her help. We have all seen how nasty Right Wing folks can be and we had to protect one of our own. Our senses are highly tuned to detect their intentions as we are aware that some of them are quite deranged and dangerous people. Have you ever read comments on The Corner or Little Green Footballs? Blood-curdling!

So, is this groupthink? No. Just check the blog responses from the Left and you will see a whole range of opinions and personal takes on the story. No talking points repeated to death. Not everyone agreeing (on Hettle's behavior, for instance). Mostly, people were having fun for a day or two pointing their fingers at yet another example of a silly Wingnut who is all macho but cannot take it when a woman puts him down. Some went to his blog and blasted him in the comments. They all thought that this would blow over in a day or two. When it did not blow over and they realized that Paul is serious and persistent, many of them changed their tone. Instead of blasting him, they tried, in good faith, to advise him against this self-destructive behavior.

Response from the Right was also very interesting. Initially, they were supportive of Paul. However, as the time passed, more and more of them - his friends, blogrollers and commenters - started advising him to, for his own good, quit the charade as it can only damage him. They had no horse in this race, so they were realistic in their assessment of the situation, and tried to help one of their own by giving him sound advice (including sound legal advice from bloggers who are also lawyers). It was heartening and reassuring to see so many of them transcend politics and do the right thing.

What happened, in my opinion, is that the two groups - the Lefties and the Righties - realized, some consciously some subconsciously, that Paul's action is potentially damaging not just to Paul, and perhaps Bitch PhD and Dr.Hettle, but that it is also potentially damaging to the blogosphere as a whole. In a sense, people from all points of the political spectrum united in a common cause - self-preservation of the blogging medium and the free-wheeling, democratic, unregulated discourse on it.

Blogosphere, and Internet as a whole, has developed, over years, a pretty good "immune system" to deal with rogues in its midst. It tries to shame them, scare them, or appease them, and it usually works in the end. However, blogosphere is very vulnerable from the outside. Any rules and regulation imposed from the outside, either by courts or legislatures, even if written with good intentions, are likely to have a devastating effect on the freedom of discourse on the Web. Some of the people almost panicked, trying to get Paul to see how damaging it would be to everyone if he proceded with lawsuits. Some teased him to produce the name of the lawyer, hoping he would crack down and give up. Others appealed to his own self-preservation instincts. Some wrote blog posts explaining exactly what the real issue is, as I have just written in the last several paragraphs.

After a while, with Dr.Hettle sending Paul an apology and Bitch PhD retracting the accusation on her blog, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and moved on, hoping for the best. Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. Keep reading.

F) A good chunk of my blog consists of analysis of the conservative ideology as motivated psychopathology.

You can go through 100+ posts on this topic if you dig through my "Understanding America" category, but what I have in mind is the application of psychological research to political ideology, ably summarized and reviewed here (pdf) and here (pdf), and perhaps to some extent here. Deignan's behavior throughout this affair was an interesting case study supporting some of the research published in the linked papers. I am not Bill Frist, so I don't do distance diagnostics, and I am not interested in Deignan as an individual, only as a representative of his ideological group and a data-point, but it was certainly interesting to see how his behavior fitted the patterns predicted by published research.

G) This was a very interesting case in which precise definitions of words mattered.

Most words have more than one definition. Often a common word gets adopted by a smaller community and used in a much narrower, more specific sense. Just think of the word "theory". In regular conversation, it means something like a hunch, a hypothesis at best. But in science, it has a very specific narrow meaning: an explanation for a broad range of phenomena, overwhelmingly supported by mountains of diverse empirical evidence. As close to "fact" as one is allowed in science. It also has predictive power. Here, again, the word "predictive" is not used in the sense "predicting the future", but in a sense of being able to "predict the results of observations or experiments before such observations or experiments are performed".

During this storm, two terms were defined and redefined endlessly by various participants and onlookers. One is "IP spoofing", the other is "libel".

Frankly, I have never heard of the term "IP spoofing" before. After all this, I am still not sure what it is. I am quite computer-illiterate. I doubt Bitch PhD is much better. At first sight, it sounds sorta like the practice of changing IP addresses in order to fool a server, thus bypass a block. Is it? How do you do it? Whatever it is, I have no idea if it is legal or not. Anyway, I understand that techno-geeks have a very precise definition of this term, but how many of them are out there? Dozens? Do we really need to know the exact definition of it? After all, the scientific meaning of "theory" is important for everyone to understand, but IP spoofing is just a very narrow technical term, so why bother.

Once she realized that she misused the term in the wrong (or is it right?) context, Bitch PhD retracted her use of that term, pleading ignorance. I am still waiting for a Creationist to retract the wrong use of "theory" pleading ignorance. Alas, misuse of that word is part of their strategy! Misusing of IP spoofing cannot possibly be thought of as "strategy" for anything. So few people have even heard of the term. It does not have a colloquial meaning. How and why would anyone use it maliciously I really cannot fathom. After all, I have yet to meet a scientist who objects to the colloquial use of "theory" when talking about something that is not related to science.

"Libel" is apparently a word with a very specific definition in the legal lingo. From what I could understand from all the blawgers who pitched in, Deignan has no case. In other words, he is using the word in its colloquial sense - he feels like he is libeled (sp?). Some lawyer is going to make a lot of money off of him on this losing case, no matter how much he insists on the contrary.

From what I understand, for something to be a libel, a statement has to: a) be untrutful, b) be said with malicious intent to harm, and c) actually cause measurable harm. Nothing anyone said or did to Paul satisfies either a, or b, or c. The only exception may be that Dr.Hettle's e-mail to Paul's advisor may count under b), but Hettle retracted and apologized since, so he is off the hook. So is Bitch PhD whose use of "IP spoofing" did not satisfy b) or c) (I am not sure about a, though). She also retracted, so she is also off the hook. Her calling him a sexist was a correct diagnosis, i.e, fails a). Finally, Paul has repeatedly made bravado claims that his career is in no jeopardy, thus undermining the case for c). So, is this thing over? Keep reading.

What did I write and why?

When the whole story broke I found it fascinating. What do bloggers do? They post about stuff they find fascinating. So, I wrote a post. While I did write a little bit of typically snarky editorializing, the primary reason for the post was to assemble, in one place, all the links to blog posts commenting on the event. I've done it before for other events (including Katrina) and I see it as a service to the blogging community to have a one-stop-shopping place where all the links are assembled. This post was appreciated by many, as I can see that they linked to it. It even appeared on Blogarithmicly, the Carnival of Link-Harvests. Heck, from what I could figure out on my Sitemeter, Paul Deignan himself used my post (and still does) as a starting point to everyone else's commentary. After a couple of days I realized that I have missed a couple of important posts, but by that time I was already bored with this story and have moved on, so I did not bother updating it any more.

I titled the post Moron. I should have listened to Berube's sound advice and titled it "A person exhibiting a moronical behavior". I have no idea if Paul is a moron or not, but his behavior in this whole affair was moronic - that's not an insult, that is a fact. Calling him a moron was an insult, as it sounded like a diagnosis (decades ago it was a technical term, now abandoned, for people with IQ of 50-70). I did it because we are always told by web gurus to make our titles snappy. It was fun, too.

If Paul found the title insulting, he did not say so in his comments on that post. I'll apologize for using the term anyway because I myself do not like the fact that I used it. BTW, in his comments on my blog, Paul was civil. I still think he is wrong, but I had no reason to be rude to him on my blog (in "my house"), or to delete his comments or ban him. He came to state his view politely. I appreciate that.

The rest of the editorializing is snarky and opinionated, designed to make fun and insult, but nothing there is exactly untrue. At the least, some of the stuff is open to interpretation. My blog, my opinion. My attitude was: the guy is digging himself deeper and deeper on his own - just let him! That was actually much milder than many posts on other blogs.

Am I proud of my post? No. Am I going to delete it? No - that would be unethical. It is OK to delete a post that is a one-liner (I have deleted at one point in the past about 20 old posts all of which stated "The new edition of such-and-such carnival is now up", an action which sped up loading times of my blog while I was temporarily using a very old computer). But it is very different to delete a post that has independent content, contains a lot of links, and is widely linked to.

Links are the currency of the blogosphere. Dead links are like fake money. Deleting posts that are linked to is a Big No-No. Code of Conduct. Unofficial. Time-tested and good. That post is part of history and a document for future historians, archivists, students and journalists. No way is it going down! This brilliant post can probably stand quite nicely on its own, but it is also important to place it in context. The context is provided by the link to my post. Breaking that link would be a really dishonorable thing to do.

But that is what Paul wants. I got an e-mail from him earlier today. He wants me to retract. He does not specify what to retract, or what his definition of retracting is. Is it deleting? Is it apologizing? Is it saying I was wrong? Does this post count as a retraction?

He did point out one sentence from that post that he though was "libel" (ah, that sorry misused word again). I deleted it. But that was not enough for Paul. You give him a finger,.... Another e-mail. Mention of $1000 in "damages" for...what? For not liking him? The guy certainly does not make himself easy to like. Does my feeling of being threatened and extorted have any legal standing? Just as much as his notion of "libel", I'd say.

His message was CC'd to a lawyer. This one. So, she is the one who is going to milk him out of all that money, I see. I say, let her!

Something about the wording of that e-mail suggests to me that I am not the only recipient. PZ apparently got some e-mails, too. The fact that he has practically stopped posting on his blog and is furiously cleaning up the old comment threads from anything substantive suggests that he may not be bluffing. But, I don't care if he does or not.

Anyway, I have no further interest in his sorry self. I have moved on from this story weeks ago and have no intention to ever revisit it again. I have a life. I have no time, money or interest to go to court - particularly in the light of what I said above, i.e., the danger that would pose to the whole blogosphere. I could have used the time it took to write this for something else - writing a more interesting post, playing with kids, going for a walk, taking a nap...

There is a saying in Serbian "The smarter one gives in" (Pametnji popusta). Sometimes it is just smarter to let a bully have his way. At least he will not have his day in court with me, which is most important for all of us. He has already been isolated by the rest of the blogosphere and is the only one still paying attention to this whole business. Although it makes me mad that someone else is dictating what I write on my blog, I think this post is small enough price to pay to never hear from him again. It will not make me look cowardly or unmanly (I am a liberal - I do not operate that way) to do what he asks. So, here Paul:

I retract and apologize for everything I wrote about you to date.
I retract and apologize for everything I am writing about you in this post right now.
I pro-actively retract (or is that pretract?) and apologize for everything I may still write about you in the future (not that I intend to), even if it is fawningly positive, even if I just use one of the memes, like "undeignanty", in an unrelated context.

OK, Paul? Happy? You like precise definition of words. Here they are. Retract. Apologize. Rinse and repeat.

It's your turn now, Paul. Now that BitchPhD has apologized, Dr. Hettle has apologized, and I have apologized, can you be a man and stop this nonsense, for everyone's sake, most importantly for the sake of your own life, family, career and nerves?

Carnival of the Green

Carnival of the Green #5 is up on The Greener Side.

2005 Weblog Awards

Wizbang is starting 2005 Weblog Awards tomorrow. As expected, there are lots of Right, and even Batshit-Crazy-Extreme-Right blogs there, so we should try to help out our reality-based brethren by voting regularly. You can vote once every 24 hours, so you don't have to pick just one blog, just one at the time. Ten days, ten votes. Here are some of my picks:

Best Blog: it's a difficult choice between Talking Points Memo, Eschaton, Daily Kos or Political Animal. I'll probably rotate these over the duration of the voting.

Best New Blog: tough choice between two of my favourite bloggers, Respectful Insolence or The Countess. Five votes each?

Best Group Blog: I'll vote for Pandagon every day for eight days. Perhaps I'll hit TPM Cafe and MyDD once, too.

Best Humor/Comics Blog: I'll hit Jesus General hard, but also give a vote or two to Fafblog.

Best Liberal Blog: Except for Wonkette, who I have no idea how she made it to this list, all are good. I think I'll mainly vote for Bitch, PhD, with some extra votes for Feministe and Rox Populi.

Best Conservative Blog: I don't think I'll vote for anyone. I don't know them well enough, and I am sure I do not like any of them. Anyone of them strongly attacking Intelligent Design Creationism?

Best Media/Journalist Blog: The best ones are missing from this list. I'll probably go with Romenesko (Poynter Online) most of the time. Perhaps a vote for James Wolcott and Jim Jarvis (BuzzMachine), once each.

Best LGBT Blog: Pam's House Blend every day.

Best Video Blog: Crooks and Liars, perhaps one vote for Rocketboom.

Best Parenting Blog: Perhaps a vote for One Happy Dog Speaks on days when I am not feeling lazy.

Best European Blog (non-UK): Fistful of Euros (where are the Balkans folks?)

Best Australia or New Zealand Blog: Deltoid, perhaps a couple for John Quiggin.

Best of the Top 250 Blogs (according to TTLB - before or after the changes in code?): Hullabaloo, Firedoglake and Orcinus, three each, and one for Making Light.

Best of the Top 251 - 500 Blogs: ten votes for Michael Berube.

Best of the Top 501 - 1000 Blogs: all for Needlenose.

Best of the Top 1001 - 1750 Blogs: I think I'll go with Language Log.

Best of the Top 1751 - 2500 Blogs: I think I'll have some fun and mess up the others by voting for the Eros Blog.

Best of the Top 2501 - 3500 Blogs: I don't know anyone on the list.

Best of the Top 3501 - 5000 Blogs: Evolution - nextstep is a RINO and a staunch defender of evolution, so perhaps I'll give him some votes.

Best of the Top 5001 - 6750 Blogs: I don't know anyone on the list.

Best of the Top 6751 - 8750 Blogs: I don't know anyone on the list.

Best Of The Rest (8501+): I don't know anyone on the list.

Best Technology Blog: I don't care. Best Culture/Gossip Blog: I don't care. Best Sports Blog: I don't care. Best Photo Blog: I don't know any of the finalists. Best Military Blog: I don't care. Best Blog Design: I don't care. Best Podcast: I don't know any of the finalists. Best Religious Blog: I don't care. Best Law Blog: the only one I know and like is Legal Fiction which is not a finalist. Best Business Blog: I don't care. Best Canadian Blog: I don't know any of the finalists. Best UK Blog: I am vaguely familiar with a couple of them - not enough to vote. Best Asian Blog: I don't know any of the finalists. Best Middle East or Africa Blog: I don't know any of the finalists. Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog: I don't know any of the finalists.

Now, go and vote. The Flash-media polls should show up any minute now.

And remember, this is just a warm-up before the real deal - the Kaufax Awards, starting very soon....

Obscure-but-Good Movies

When Milkriverblog asked for obscure-but-good movies the other day, I was busy and distracted, so I did not give it enough thought. If you ask nicely, he will send you MSWord file of the list (more than 150 titles) so you can print it out and take with you when you go movie-shopping.

I seconded other people's suggestions (Milkriverblog has links to them), specifically "Fast, Cheap and Out Of Control" (a movie I adore), "My Dinner With Andre" and "Zatoichi". My own suggestion was tongue-in-cheek - "Alien Avengers", a silly C-grade movie I liked because Anastasia Sekularis is in it and she's hot!

But I wish I was in the right mood then, because I would have suggested some others, too. I love Japanese movies, including all the monster stuff with Godzila, Gilala and Mothra. My copy of The Calamari Warrior is coming soon, too, and I'll try to find the Koala Executive.

Of course, I've seen a lot of Kurosawa, but he is not obscure. My absolute favourite, a movie I have seen many times is Seven Samurai, after all these years still better than its offshoots The Magnificent Seven, Battle Beyond the Stars, and the Bug's Life. Though, actually, those three are good. Battle Beyond the Stars is funny as hell, and it does count as obscure, so I could have suggested that one. Rashomon, Throne of Blood and Yojimbo are my other Kurosawa favourites. Yojimbo was remade as a Western, too, one of my favourite Westerns of all times: A Fistful of Dollars (not to be confused with the blog Fistful of Euros).

To close the Japan section, I'd have to recommend Tampopo, a movie for food lovers. And, if I had to choose only one Japanese obscure-but-good movie, I would suggest Kwaidan, the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life. I have no idea how I managed to persuade myself to see it the second time, but I know I will not do it the third time. Ever. If you want to be scared, really scared, watch it on a large digital screen, late at night, sitting in the dark alone. Make sure you are wearing diapers.

All right. I've seen every single movie that Bruce Lee has ever made. Most of them more than once. Enter The Dragon, dunno, a dozen times or more...

Actually, let me make a little switch now. Hey, this is blogging, I can start a post one way and end it another way. Sue me. The best measure of one's liking of a movie is seeing it more than once. Not by chance when it's on cable when you're bored, but intentionally ordering, renting or even going to the theater to see it again and again and again. So, on that note, which movies I have intentionally seen multiple times?

As I mentioned above, Enter The Dragon - many times. I have seen Seven Samurai several times and I'll gladly see it again. I have seen some of the other movies I mentioned above twice, including Kwaidan, A Fistful of Dollars, Battle Beyond The Stars, Alien Avengers, The Bug's Life and Magnificient Seven. And I'd see them all again. What else?

Aristocats
Fiddler on the Roof
Midnight Express
Hair
Seventh Seal
Ko to tamo peva (Who's Singing Over There)
Spaceballs
(Susan and) Jeremy
Shane
Dom za vesanje/Time of the Gypsies
Wild Things
Good, Bad and Ugly
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Dark Star
Dr.Strangelove
Easy Rider
Mars Attacks
Charlotte's Web
Love Story
History of the World, Part I
Clash of the Titans
Two Mules for Sister Sara
Soylent Green
Deliverance
Sleeper
Underground
WR: Mysteries of Orga(ni)sm
Animal Farm
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Too Afraid To Ask
Young Frankenstein
Serendipity
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Finally, I saw The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother only once, decades ago, but my brother and I are still trying to figure out which one of us is the smarter brother.

What a weird mix of genres, countries of origin, and quality! High art, kids movies, sentimental schlock, classic westerns, teen-angst, kung-fu action, dark comedy, ancient science fiction... Don't ask! Even I have no idea what is it about these particular movies that makes me watch them again and again....And not to mention that I liked many other movies that I have seen only once. At least not a single one of these has Tom Cruise in it!

So, what movies do you watch again and again? Can you say why?

Tar Heel Tavern

Brand new Tar Heel Tavern is up on Colonel Corn's Camera. It is beautiful - I love the graphics (and the sometimes snarky editorial tone)!

Let me know if you want to host next weekend!

A Printed Rant by Sue

Hey, heads up! Go to Sue Polinsky's blog Southern Rants to read the copy of her article about blogging she wrote for today's Greensboro News & Record: A printed Rant. It has a lot about ConvergeSouth, the Greensboro (and North Carolina) blogging community, and generally what blogging is and isn't. Except for Sue's Place, there is no other way to find that article online - hardcopy only.

Ground-shaking

According to this article the biggest skyscraper in the world, in Taiwan, is so heavy that it reopened an ancient seismic fault, resulting in more frequent and stronger earthquakes since it was built. Who would have thunk!

Carnival of the Balkans - call for submissions

The fifth edition of the Carnival of the Balkans will be posted on Yakima Gulag Literary Gazette on or around December 15th. If you are from the Balkans, or currently in the Balkans, or write, at least occasionally, about the Balkans, please submit your posts. Watch Yakima's blog for further instructions. You can also use this carnival submission form.

The host is particularly interested in posts that deal with "...the transition for people from the Balkans living in the West and for people who have lived in the West what is the adjustment, perhaps something that was easier something that was worse, something that was incomprehensible..."

So, anything about adjustment, transition, surviving the culture shock, dealing with nostalgia.... send it in! Also, if you want to host on January 15th, let us know!

Classifications of Blogs

So, what type of blogger are you - a singer, ringer, stringer, finger or flinger? Reading this may help you decide. It is expanded into an interesting essay here.

Or, perhaps you prefer this classification scheme. In that case, are you a Meme-du-jour blogger, Caterer, Nicheblogger, Internet guide, The celebrity-blogger, The service blogger, or The long-tail blogger?

Or perhaps you prefer the old simple division into Linkers and Writers?

Why do you like or dislike any of the above classifications? Have you seen any other classifications that you liked or disliked? If so, let me know - I am interested in putting them all together.

What type of blogger are you?

I think I am all of the above (except an independently famous person who also blogs) - at some times more of one type, at other times more of another, sometimes all of it in one day when I post a lot of different types of posts. Who is going to categorize me?

I am eating this right now....

More stuff from my brother's parcel found its way to my dinner plate tonight - I am eating as I type. Together with thinly sliced proscuitto (see below), I also spread some liver pate on bread:
I opened a can of sardines from the Adriatic Sea:
....and opened a jar of ajvar - a winter preserve made of chopped peppers:
In the meantime, each of the kids ate a KinderEgg and put together the toy from the parts hidden in the hollow insides of the egg:
Leter, they may have some candy, perhaps Kiki or Bronhi:



BTW, I have found yet another online source of East European food. And, since you did not see it last, time, here is the tub of Eurokrem:

Outrageous - Rape Victim Made to Pay!

Wow! This is twisted! A victim of a gang rape not just did not see her attackers hauled to jail, but also was charged for bringing her case to trial! Adding insult to injury!

Seeing the Forest has the story. Kevin Hayden knows the victim. Shakespeare's Sister wrote the best commentary so far.

The story is spreading, so check, for instance responses by Amanda, Mustang Bobby and Heretic.

History Carnival

The latest History Carnival is up on CLEWS, and it has some really cool stuff!

Carnival of the Liberals - call for submissions

The official call for submissions for the first edition of The Carnival of the Liberals has now been issued. Send your best recent posts using this nifty automated submission form.

You can also pick up the logo if you click here:

Heard the Word of Blog?

Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions

This weekend, the Tar Heel Tavern will be hosted by Colonel Corn's Camera. Send your entries to kennethcorn AT alltel DOT net

Poor persecuted Christians....have to hide their religion....

make your own sign

A simple explanation

From I Am An Atheist, via Pratie Place, come these "commandments":

As an atheist you have a number of rights and responsibilities. These include (but are not limited to):

1. Have no gods.
2. Don't worship stuff.
3. Be polite.
4. Take a day off once in a while.
5. Be nice to folks.
6. Don't kill people.
7. Don't fool around on your significant other.
8. Don't steal stuff.
9. Don't lie about stuff.
10. Don't be greedy.

Remember, theists will condemn you for living by this code because you are doing it of your own free will instead of because you're afraid that if you don't a supreme being will set you on fire.

I've seen this on a couple of other blogs and the commenters always fixate on the ten lines in the middle, dissecting the similarities and differences between each of these rights and responsibilities and the same-numbered Christian Commandments. But this is not seeing the forest for the trees. The key is in the text at the end.

This whole exercise was done in order to point out the difference between what psychologists call "external locus of moral authority" and "internal locus of moral authority". The internal LOMA, brought about by modern, loving, nurturant parenting, makes you behave right because it is a part of you, your second nature. Doing "bad" is just not something you consider. It has no appeal to you. It's easy.

The external LOMA, on the other hand, gets built by Dobsonian-style strict-to-abusive parenting. As a result, the person behaves right because of fear of punishment. The flip-side of this is that behaving right is not a second nature - the person is constantly tempted to do "bad". What keeps religious fanatics from stealing, raping and pilaging (at least most of the time) is the fear of God's punishment. Yet, they are tempted all the time, and every now and then they cannot resist temptation - thus high rates of all sorts of crimes, including sex-related crimes in countries, states and areas (mostly rural) where this kind of childrearing runs rampant.

But, the worst situation is when people with external LOMA lose religion. Then, they behave right only when they think they are going to get caught, arrested and put in prison. Whenever they think they can get away with it, they yield to the temptation to do the nasty stuff. More powerful they are in the social hierarchy and more invincible they think they are, more likely they will do bad stuff because they think they can get away with it. And what is higher in our social hierarchy than working in the White House?

Cedevita - it's good for you!

This is another nostalgic product from my brother's package - Cedevita! An orange flavored, orange colored, vitamin drink:


I used to drink one every day when I was a kid (and even when I was not a kid any more). I used to make it about 4 times as strong as the recommended dose - I knew the surplus vitamins just get flushed out of the system. It tasted better that way.

Later in life, I used to fix myself one glass of Cedevita to go together with my afternoon superstrong Turkish coffee.

People my age or slightly older may remember that the original name for this was Cedemonta. And, those much older, if still alive and functioning, may still to this day call this Cedemonta as habits die hard (sorta like calling every cotton-swab a Q-tip, or a paper handkerchief "Paloma" - another Yugoslav brand).

1000

The 1,000th execution since death penalty became legal in the USA in the 1970s occured around 2am this morning about 30 miles away from me. Another milestone for North Carolina.

Internet is officially as traditional as building a neighbor's barn

If you have no online presence, you officially do not exist. If you do not have a website or blog of your own, you have been beaten even by the Amish!!!

Dictionary of Republicanisms

People who have read Lakoff and have followed the devious work of Frank Luntz are well-aware of Republican use of Orwellian language, but it is nice to see that a number of blogs have recently picked up on Katrina vanden Heuvel's Dictionary of Republicanisms. Two years ago, on John Edwards' campaign blog I started doing something similar and many commenters added their own ideas to my initial few. Of course, many new ones showed up in the past two years. I hope she sells tons of those books....

Rats - play and learn

What a cool way to teach science, as well as love for all creatures great and small: The Xtreme Rat Challenge at Nebraska Wesleyan (formerly known as Rat Olympics until US Olympic Committee threatened to sue)!
(hat-tip:Lindsay)

Quotes on Specialization

Today's Quotes of the Day:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert Anson Heinlein, 1907 - 1988

The time comes when you realize that you haven't only been specializing in something - something has been specializing in you.
- Arthur Miller, 1915 - 2005

In the 20th century, specialisation has become the counterfeit of brilliance.
- Richard Gordon

The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance—these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1904 - 1967

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
- Theodore Roethke, 1908 - 1963

Blog Against Racism Day - find all posts!

Blogaritmicly #4, the carnival of link-harvests, appeared today, somewhat off schedule, as a special edition dedicated to tracking all the blog contributions to the Blog Against Racism Day.

More Food From Home....

My brother and his wife sent me another, even bigger, package of edible nostalgia. I will post the pictures over the next few days.

They sent me another box of chocolate-covered wafers, not one but three bars of Eurokrem blok, plus a tub of the creamy version, two packages of Jaffa Cakes and an even bigger box of bajaderas. And much, much more - stay tuned. All that stuff can be ordered online from Taste of Europe.

Right now, I am enjoying some prsuta, smoked beef I sliced VERY thin:

Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

Do you want to make a religious fundamentalist faint?

Wear this wedding gown:

It is stretchy...good if the belly is expanding fast!

Circus of the Spineless

Circus of the Spineless #3 is up on Urban Dragon Hunters. All things invertebrate, for your creepy-crawly pleasure...

What is Blogging All About

Colin McEnroe's blogging course up in Connecticut is coming close to the end. Several of the students have really taken off with this, new to them, form of communication. They are posting like mad, they are commenting on each others' blogs, discovering cool other blogs and websites, and I am sure they will continue blogging long after the class is over. I urge you to go and look at the comments on the class blog and follow the links on the sidebar to student blogs to see their posts. They have built quite a little mini-community of their own, with a number of us voyeurs in the bleachers.

For the last class (which, I am assuming, is convening tonight), they spent some time figuring out what to discuss, as there was no predetermined assignment. In the end, they want to talk about what blogging is, where it is heading, and especially what is the meaning of the word "personal" when applied to a blogger.

Elin of Nileblog compares blogging and writing: "But it feels good to blog, because we get to express ourselves as fully and completely as we want. And no one interrupts. Or walks away. Instead, we get to write it, so it feels full and permanent (even if only in cyberspace). I think that's a good thing." She initially defines 'personal" as 'intimate' and loves how easy it is to find like-minded people in the blogosphere. She then makes an interesting comment about the bloggers in the basements of their parents' homes on this post on her classmate's blog Bill's Blither.

The Screamin' Memey has finally learned how to do the links properly, although the photos still overlap each other. Has the class built its own anthill in the swarm of the blogosphere?

Transgenderedtrash of Don't do the crime if you can't..... disagrees it's a swarm and is being generally pessimistic about the future of blogging.

Christopher Michael of Metablognition has a rare angle on the blogs - how do they both reflect and affect the way we think and function. Then, he points to an interesting study (PDF) about teen use of the Internet (19% of online teens keep a blog and 38% read them) and adds a couple more to bolster his case that blogs will have effects on teh cognition of its users, especially on those growing up blogging.

Semper Gumby cuts through the noise and disagrees with all of his classmates on the meaning of "personal".

Eric on Don't hate, prestidigitate is exploring blogs as journeys, as well as the conflict between anonymity and community. Is each blog, or blogosphere as a whole, trying to go somewhere? Perhaps travel from anonymity to community?

Brett of Nonsense has taken to blogging perhaps more than any of his classmates, spilling out the details of his dates, emotions, politics, and everything else, so he may have a diffent take on what is "personal". He's also figured out recently how to make his blog look all nice and pretty with some technical know-how I don't have. Is the journey really the emergence of personality?

John of Jean DuBlog thinks that blogging is changing the meaning of the word 'personality' and there is a difference between changing topics and changing voices.

Erin thinks that there is a competition between online and offline social life (and she failed to post het Friday Cat Photo). And she points out that someone in that class discovered this article that argues that posting a Friday Cat photo helps your readers remember your blog better (so they''ll come back).

I hope they post some more after class meeting tonight, post their final papers online for all of us to read, and I also hope they all keep blogging.

Update: They had their class and some have added new posts:

Screamin' memey disagrees with Mark (transgendertrash).

Eric podcasts his final thoughts.

Shante of Blogging For Beginners added three quick posts in a row: No one is alone, truly, Why lack of anonymity has ruined my love life and some more on the personal....

Matthew of Perpetual Perpetuity started his blog as a kind of a time capsule. It is maddening that some of the students have additional, 'personal' blogs that I cannot find and read...

JP of A Novice Blogger's Thoughts posts the first initial reaction. I hope more is coming...

Finally, Colin, on his personal blog, nails the whole "personal" thing.

Blog Against Racism Day

Today is the Blog Against Racism Day. You should write something on the topic today and send a link to your post here.

As someone growing up in Eastern Europe I feel woefully unprepared by life experiences to write about this topic. Actually, I have mentioned race here only a couple of times, and have written only one post specifically about it. I don't feel I should try to write again about something I have not lived through or even thought through sufficiently to be able to avoid all the potential pitfalls. So, just go and read my old post: Femiphobia and Race.

Update: As of now, Technorati is showing 69 posts either announcing or participating in this. Please send your URL's to Chris to the link above.