The Last Ephor

Nifong has no recall of session . What a surprise. I hope he has a long long time to recall it when he's behind bars for a slew of misconduct charges.

Was there a terrorist probe onboard American Airlines Flight 62? Reading the link I'd be hard pressed to come to another conclusion. I am surprised none of the passengers left their seats when this was happening. (I'll refrain from noting that the plane was coming from France). Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming . The cracks in the monolith of man made global warming continue apace. This is long overdue. We ought to be vigorously debating this not dismissing people who disagree. The implications are staggering and the sacrifices we're being asked to make to end this are similarly massive. To simply accept this as fact and steamroll everyone who disagrees is dangerous. We're still have people debating evolution. Should they be shouted down? No. Whether or not we should be moving towards environmentally friendly power sources is a separate question. Simply for reasons of stewardship and quality of life. By not only punishing those who pollu...

We're all about Formula 1 and World Rally Watching 100 rednecks drive in a circle for three hours isn't my idea of fun. Give me some turns other than left damnit! For your amusement: Here's Juan Pablo Montoya trying to kill (I'm only half joking when I say that) Kimi Raikkonen: The two were neck and neck in the points. Which also led to this incident (salty language warning): On the other side of the coin, we have World Rally Championship which feature turbo charged 4 wheel drive cars that drive off road at over 100 mph. If you like crashes, WRC is for you. These races are also different in that, they're staged. You can win some stages and lose others and still win the race. Since there's no place to pit and the course is a not a circuit they run from A to B and time you. Times are aggregated and whomever finishes with the lowest total time, wins. Here are WRC 2006 FIA Gala Official Season Highlights Sebastian Loeb must have a pact with the Prince Of D...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

An Arab poet with a sens of humor . "When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner - you know that you are in an Arab country… "When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity - do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. "When religion has control over science - you can be sure that you are in an Arab country. "When clerics are referred to as 'scholars' - don't be astonished, you are in an Arab country. "When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and whom nobody is permitted to criticize - do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country. "When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery - do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country. "When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but [see them] seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high p...

Comic books + Physics + humor = Pure geek love

Hube has a post here about the latest installment of BSG. It's one of the few shows I watch closely and the only one that has any sort of political subtext (or even text for that matter). I hate to part company with Hube on this one (esp. after the nice link) but I must. He says: Here we are -- yet again -- in an absolute life or death situation, and the few surviving humans are ... going on strike ... because they haven't had a day off? Because working conditions are brutal?? The show's writers once again have attempted to demonstrate that they're "with it" -- they're "connected" with modern-day issues and concerns (in this case, growing social inequality, poor working conditions, child labor) yet they always seem to fail to grasp that the situation in which they themselves have placed ... themselves doesn't quite make for a believable (nay, feasible) yarn. I have to disagree. The fatigue of being forever under threat means that you event...

Whenever I debate faith with atheists they come down on the side of science as if it's the polar opposite of faith. Science is known, is true and is fact. It is provable. Faith, they argue, is imaginary, illusory, unreality. It is not provable. Remember when we were told to take asprin to prevent heart attacks? Not so much. Science is not immutable. Not even today when we think we know everything.

BREITBART.COM - Democrats Split Over Iraq Plan Details Democrats' ambitious plans to limit President Bush's war authority and force a change of course in Iraq are faltering amid party divisions over how quickly and aggressively they should shoot themselves in the foot act. Some of the members realize they were only placating the moonbats with talks of getting out of Iraq. Now that they're safely ensconced in office, they need not worry what the lumpenproles want. A group of senior Senate Democrats is pushing to repeal the 2002 measure authorizing the war and write a new resolution restricting the mission and ordering troop withdrawals to begin by this summer. In the House, a respected veteran wants to use Congress' spending power to essentially force Bush to scale back U.S. involvement in Iraq. Rescinding the order is like taking back sex after the baby's been born. Just don't work that way. Note also the "respected veteran" line. They better not...

Pelosi Falls Short On Election Promises Well, yes. Some of us knew this before the first ballot was cast. Pelosi vowed that five-day workweeks would be a hallmark of a harder-working Democratic majority. So far, the House has logged only one. Lawmakers plan to clock three days this week. That's pretty good considering their salaries. Not to mention they take August off. Add a dash of gerrymandering and you're set with a goldbricking job for life. The speaker has denied Republicans a vote on their proposals during congressional debates -- a tactic she previously declared oppressive and promised to end. Pelosi has opened the floor to a Republican alternative just once. Well, that was when she was running for office. Now that she's through the gate she slams it behind her. This is not new nor is it confined to Defeatocrats. The GOP does the same thing. The judicial spots are always held off as long as possible no matter who's in power. Pelosi set a high standard...

Blacks "are welcome as long as they understand this is our community," said Adam Light, a leader in the Caucasian Coalition, a group formed eight months ago to address the shifts in the neighborhood in recent years. I changed two words. See if changing them back changes your perspective. Bigotry in action.

John Scalzi has written a very successful book called "Old Man's War." In this article, he pulls back the curtain to let his readers see about how much he earned last year doing so. I was surprised by his frankness but moreso by the mechanics of the business. I, of course, had this notion that once the book was in the galley, the writers were off on vacation while the royalty checks rolled in. Silly deluded me. Read the whole thing esp. if you're a scifi fan or aspiring writer (or both).

The Worst Job in America I think I blogged this one before. If not, watch the video. Hilarous.

Navy develops 8-Megajoule railgun, Nukem bows down The mere mention of the word brings back visions of the original first-person-shooters to grace our now-antiquated machines, and now the US Navy is getting real personal with a realized version of the pixelated railgun we all love and adore. Presumably ripped straight from the (admittedly lacking) storyline of Quake, an 8-Megajoule railgun has been officially created, fired, and deemed worthy of flanking our naval ships, which should strike fear in the hearts of anyone wishing us harm. The gun was showcased this week at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, Virginia, and utilizes massive quantities of electricity rather than gunpowder to propel "nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds." The weapon is powerful enough to equal the damage inflicted by a Tomahawk cruise missile, and the device's project director compared the impact to hitting a solid object "going 380 miles-per-hour in a Ford Taurus." ...

Robot swarms 'evolve' effective communication - tech - 23 February 2007 - New Scientist Tech Robots that artificially evolve ways to communicate with one another have been demonstrated by Swiss researchers. The experiments suggest that simulated evolution could be a useful tool for those designing of swarms of robots. Evolution eh? Sounds like creationism at it's origin and then followed by evolution! By Jehovah, the Fundies are right! The simulated bots were allowed to explore their surroundings. The genomes of the bots that found food and avoided poison most efficiently were recombined, mimicking biological natural selection. Their "genomes" were combined and randomised in a way designed to mimick mating and mutation and used this to create the next generation robot. In each experiment, five hundred generations were evolved this way, under different selective pressures. "Under some conditions, sophisticated communication evolved," says Keller. ...