Fascinating analysis: American politics, Obama, and Vietnam

There’s a completely fascinating analysis of the American political scene, and the 2008 race, at the Atlantic Monthly. Interestingly enough, unlike much of their content, it’s available to nonsubscribers– are they backing a particular candidate? Regardless, the author, senior editor Andrew Sullivan, makes a point which I, as a barely-Boomer, found to [...]

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that there RAT movie

Some friends were praising it highly online, the new Disney/Pixar movie ‘Ratatouille’. I saw an excerpt on TiVo, and discovered that I am turning into a Grown-Up. Clearly I need to go off and do Irresponsible Things.
All I could think was: RAT. There’s a RAT in the KITCHEN. It’s [...]

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so very not work-safe…

…unless hysterical laughter is ok at your work. No, seriously. This is insanely great.
Khraigslist ‘missed connections’. Freakin’ *brilliant*. And oh, oh, oh, so terribly, horribly, hysterically realistic.
Apologies for not citing whomever on my flist who posted this, I’d closed all the LJ tabs before reading the link.

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"Science" encompasses many things…

…including practices that will be thought of as sheerest quackery 50 years from now, as were some of today’s practices 50 years ago. I’m not interested in outlawing science, not even remotely. I AM interested in calling attention to the fact that a lot of *really bad science* seems to insist [...]

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Addendum: on dogs, and on animal research

Most people grow up so far out of touch with animals that they probably shouldn’t even be doing animal research. Researchers ’surprised’ by dogs’ abilities? Did any of them grow up with a family dog?
Growing up with one or more dogs, two or more cats, and various numbers of goats, chickens, and occasionally [...]

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animals, yes, they ARE smart, aware, feeling, etc

posted this great Washington Post article about cognitive reasoning and inference in dogs, who behaved similarly to 14-month-old children in an inference test. And I just have to RANT, seeing the ‘wow, who knew?’ tone of this article (not at him, at the world in general).
I grew up with animals. They [...]

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Need for a New Culture

Once again, Phil Agre comes out and says, far more eloquently than I could, some things I’ve been thinking lately and takes them a few steps further:

The need for a new culture.
–Phil Agre, excerpted from RRE News
The world is being swept by new materials, including computational devices that can be embedded into anything. These [...]

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