mcdspot

It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?

– Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley, on a visit to the Creation Museum

Behold the ant.

…how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

– from the recent Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin

I was surprised to learn in law school that the right to privacy is not expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, but is extracted from portions of the Bill of Rights and, depending on which case you read, from the Fourteenth Amendment. Only recently have I come across the article which essentially brought the right into being, originally published in the Harvard Law Review by Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis in 1890. It is a long but fascinating read and can be found here.

Bacteria talk to each other with chemicals. They do so for a host of reasons, some of them hard to understand unless you are another bacterium (or a dedicated bacteriologist), but one of the most straightforward is demonstrated by Bacillus subtilis.

If B. subtilis individuals are growing in a food-poor area, they release chemicals into their surroundings. These essentially tell their neighbours: “There’s not much food here, so clear off or we’ll both starve.”

In response to these chemical messages, the other bacteria set themselves up further away, completely changing the shape of the colony.

– from the New Scientist article ‘Why microbes are smarter than you thought’.

Our brains, which art in our heads,
Treasured be thy name. Thy reasoning
Come. Thy best you can do be done
On earth as it is. Give us this day new
Insight to help us resolve conflicts and
Ease pain. And lead us not
Into supernatural explanations, and
Deliver us from denial of laogic.
For thine is the kingdom of reason,
And even though thy powers are limited
And you’re nor always glorious,
You are the best evolutionary adaptation
We have for helping this earth now and
Forever and ever.

So be it.

PETA wants Phish to change their band name to “Sea Kittens.”

Sometimes even the homeless get cool gear.

And the not-so-homeless get solar tents!

(thanks, Sharon)

That’s not a knife. This is a knife.

The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva: A Summary of How an Awakening Being Behaves.

Remember all the brouhaha when Fox News forgot which party Larry Craig belonged to? And when Fox ‘mistakenly’ reported Mark ” Foley as being a Democrat?

Weel, they just did it again with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Coincidence? Probably not.

All of this is proving Reuben Bolling right:

(via)

Here, have 100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists.

Beware : Do Not Read This Poem
by Ishmael Reed

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman , so vain she
surrounded herself w/
       many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
      mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house, but she was too
swift for them . she disappeared
      into a mirror
each tenant who bought the house
after that , lost a loved one to
      the ol woman in the mirror :
      first a little girl
      then a young woman
      then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs

back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into the poem . from
      the waist down
nobody can hear you can they ?
this poem has had you up to here
      belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w/ this poem

move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic : the us bureau of missing persons re-
      ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people
      disappeared leaving no solid clues
      nor trace       only
a space       in the lives of their friends

The Cinquain is a haiku-inspired form invented by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey utilizing an increasing syllable count in the first four lines, namely two in the first, four in the second, six in the third, and eight in the fourth, before returning to two syllables on the last line. Some examples can be found here:

under
the hedge a
welcome haven—
down my neck raindroplets
trickle

dank fog
envelops
a bonfire night—
the party becomes a
damp squib

a light
frost whitens
the frozen verge—
inert below,summer
awaits

Wordnik is an ongoing project devoted to discovering
all the words and everything about them.

Here are the 100 most beautiful words in the English language, according to one Robert Beard. I’m inclined to agree with him.

Insouciance.

Peccadillo.

Seraglio.

Diaphanous.

“Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects.”

– Keith Moon’s secondary school art teacher

Country Fair
by Charles Simic

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,
It doesn’t matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.