Around the web

Yes, that’s correct, I am still not mentally prepared to take on all the Bush Administration scandals–I’m following all the stories, but it’s already enough to both wear out my anger and make me want a shower, without trying to synthesize it all. Yuck.

So, another post of interesting tidbits follows the jump.

Paul Myers has a post, quoting a Star Tribune story that mercilessly mocks the Kansas decisions about evolution, intelligent design, and science. (Just put ‘evolution’ in that search bar on the right, and you’ll get all the background.) Most of the mockery is in the form of the “Kansas science exam”.

Interestingly, the story appears to have been purged from the Strib site, but fortunately Myers quoted all the good bits.

3. If male zebra finches are raised by foster parents of another species, the Bengalese finch, they will court female Bengalese finches instead of females of their own kind. Which statement best explains their behavior?

a. Birds are animals!
b. Imprinting
c. Gold-digging
d. What happens in Bengal stays in Bengal
e. Co-habituation
f. If you’d ever had the chance to court a Bengalese finch, you wouldn’t have to ask

8. The bones of a human arm are homologous (another homo word) to structures in all of the following except:

a. A frog’s extra leg
b. A spiral galaxy’s arm
c. A camouflaged moth’s wing
d. A right whale’s flipper
e. A child’s left behind

OK, first go read this. It will only take a moment. It’s pretty amusing. (I got that from boingboing.)

Now, read this segment of an IM conversation:

Me: http://www.neatorama.com/neat/worst-sin.htm
Wife: 🙂
Me: Who knew?
Wife: Apparently the fatal consequences haven’t hit you yet.
Me: What are you suggesting?
Wife: I am suggesting nothing.
Wife: Hey. Maybe that’s why you’re bald.

Sigh. I get no respect, I tell you.

I was running out of Teaching Company stuff, for those times when I’m in the mood for neither music nor fiction while driving, but it appears I won’t have a shortage of high quality lectures. I just found out about the Princeton web media archives. There’s got to be around a hundred archived lectures there. A little magic with Offline Explorer to capture the audio streams, and then some voodoo with WinAmp, some plugins, and CDEx, and I’ll have a hundred new MP3s to keep in the car for the next time the mood hits me.

I almost can’t wait to get to the most recent one: “The Consequences of Incompetence: The All-Too-Human Costs of Bad Thinking and Poor Decision-making by People in High Places”. I wonder who it’s about. Heh.

Boy, I sure liked Sinead O’Connor’s first album when it came out. Hell, I still like it. I probably mentioned that before.

However, I had not previously heard the “Jump In The River” extended version, “which basically played the song and then let Karen Finley in the door to rant and, indeed, pant for another five minutes”, nor had I previously heard either of the MC Lyte mixes of “I Want Your (Hands On Me)” from the 12″.

So, that makes it cool that these things just appeared in my RSS aggregator. Good old Poison To The Mind.

I believe I have mentioned previously my fascination with words in other languages that capture ideas foreign to English , or which encapsulate in single terms ideas that take a lot of words to convey in English. Both cases highlight cultural differences between English-speaking cultures and those of speakers of the other languages.

Well, the Mainichi Daily News brings some more examples of these, this time from the vocabulary of certain Japanese women. Here’s a couple of examples:

KAKO BIJIN (Past Beauty) — a woman who would have been called a beauty if she had been born in an earlier age. Kako Bijin tend, Sunday Mainichi says, to go on about how they would have been popular with guys if they had been born in the Heian Era (794-1194).

TOIRE BIJITSUKAN (Toilet Art Gallery) — used to describe beautifully decorated home toilets equipped with pleasant fragrances and packed with plenty of reading materials. Toire Bijitsukan are apparently wildly popular among single women in their 30s.

NAKAYOSHI NINPU (Buddy Pregnancy) — a trend where women deliberately get pregnant at the same time as a friend so they can go through the process together.

RIKONMIMI NENZO (Divorce Talk Generation) — those women inspired to consider ending a marriage because they hear a lot of talk about how much happier their friends have become since getting a divorce. Mainly describes women in their late 30s.

I love anything that makes fun of Powerpoint presentations, and people who take such things seriously. I also love people who do goofy stuff at their workplace. And, I must admit, I have an abiding love for Steranko-era Nick Fury, the super-spy incarnation.

So the idea of seeing Fury’s recruitment presentation amuses me greatly.

Seriously, some people will buy anything.

I’m with Penn in principle.

So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

On the other hand, when he says ” I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God.” he annoys me. Perhaps he should consult a dictionary. Atheism is exactly the belief that there is no god. It’s a definite belief in the non-existence of god or gods. What Penn is talking about, the lack of belief in God, is something else, something closer to agnosticism.

No, really. Anything.

I am really enjoying the Warning Label Generator, used to put that first graphic in this post.

I am sorely tempted to combine it with the warnings from “A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels” (alternate link), originally from the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

Wow, that looks pretty great.

I once took labels, printed with all different warnings from the article, on a road trip. At every stop along the way, I stuck the labels on random products in gas stations, convenience stores, Walmarts, etc. It would be even better with these, more graphic, label renditions.

(Note also that this is a detail I left out of the story that Neil found so long. Hell, I only told him the short version–I also left out the rats, the Rennaissance Fair, Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, Crazy Horse mountain, that weird statue, etc., etc.)