Barry Crawford has a fundraiser for a magnificent project: MECHATEUTHIS.
He intends to display this glorious mechanical creation at Burning Man, which is fine, I suppose…but once Burning Man is over, he needs to keep moving north and east, because it’s ultimate destiny must lie in Morris, Minnesota, in my yard.
I wonder if the university would complain if I gave credit to teams of 8 students every semester, whose job was to crank it for my pleasure all the time?
Using a paleobiology database, here’s a map of all the fossils that have been discovered in the US, of all sorts.
There are some patterns in there. The one that disappoints me, though, is that western Minnesota, where I live, seems to be a great wasteland for fossils.
I feel for the poor girl, but still:
Her parents insisted that she wasn’t sick, just Scottish
I must be getting better! Give me a few more days for my sense of humor to mature to something slightly less infantile.
Only slightly, mind you.
I saw this article on why humans kiss, and my first thought was dread — it’s going to be another of those horrible evo psych articles, isn’t it? But to my happy surprise, it isn’t, and the article is pretty good.
It’s very strange to see all the hullabaloo about this New Yorker article on imminent catastrophic demise of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up there, I consider it one of the best places in the world to live, and most of my family still lives there…I ought to be horrified, terrified, and frantically calling my mother and telling her to move.
Unfortunately, we get this same story every few years. I lived in the Green River Valley, and every once in a while someone would notice that all that fertile farmland was built on top of a pyroclastic mudflow, and the valley was actually a great big chute for deadly lahars from Mt Rainer to the gates of Seattle.
Except we’ll also be arriving at Pluto. I shall try to stir from my haze enough to see the pictures from that distant whatever-it-is.
At least, not the pink ones.
Let me tell you, cellulitis is no fun at all. I had a rocky weekend of excruciating pain, culminating in an an emergency room visit and big ol’ needles puncturing my plumply adorable butt. Then this morning, our Changes in Nature workshop started up, and I gamely stumbled in and did the first 3 hours. And that’s it. I’m done. I have collapsed onto a cushy chair and am lapsing into a kind of restless catatonia.
Oh, right, there was another doctor’s visit after class, and more needles and pills. No, really, I can’t do no more.
The Pan Am games start in Toronto this week, and they have a remarkable demand on their website.
Links to this Site are not permitted except with the written consent of TO2015™. If you wish to link to the Site, you must submit a written request to TO2015™ to do so. Requests for written consent can be sent to branduse@toronto2015.org. TO2015™ reserves the right to withhold its consent to link, such right to be exercised in its sole and unfettered discretion.
Aww. That’s so cute. It makes me nostalgic for the old days when clueless lawyers would send cease-and-desist letters to people, telling them to remove any links to their precious and pure website.
Well, you heard the man. Don’t link to toronto2015.org, because that would be bad. Unless you’re evil like me, that is. I’m linking to them in order to drain their vital essence, and in order to send poisonous corruption up the web to toronto2015.org.
I never even heard of the Pan Am games before this! I’m also gnashing my teeth in frustration that their SIWOTI advertising campaign is working.
Shall I give you an example? Here’s one I’ve actually heard from atheists: “Christians don’t really believe in God, because the god idea is stupid. They only go to church because they’re afraid of death/need social reassurance/were brainwashed.” Another permutation of that is that since the god idea is stupid, the only people who believe in a god are the really stupid people.
It’s a somewhat popular sentiment because, face it, once you’ve seen the illogic of religion and become an atheist, it can be hard to understand how people can still fall for that baloney, and we struggle to make sense of their irrational decision. And then we come up with what seems a simple and obvious answer — nobody can seriously accept that zombie jesus/redemption by blood sacrifice crap, right? — that also has a kind of self-centered appeal (we must be the smart ones!) and it’s hard to resist.
