Lots of speculation about how the New World was populated by the old may have been answered by an exhaustive DNA study. The findings: the Americas were settled in three waves from northeast Asia beginning at least 15,000 years ago: [Read more…]
If that header doesn’t grab you, then you my friend have bigger problems than sex and religion can solve. Unfortunately, I may not deliver on the headline. It refers to a new book, Homo Mysterious by evolutionary psychologists Davd Barosh, that I have on order. Female sexuality is one of the topics the author writes about, but there is another graf in the review that caught my eye: [Read more…]
Scottish peat bogs were known as natural mummifiers to local residents thousands of years ago. But one gravesite on a small island has turned up an even weirder practice right out of Mary Shelley’s classic novel: [Read more…]
The distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto gets a new moon, and the new Horizons Mission to Pluto has a new target when it visits the system three years hence: [Read more…]
Mitt Romney addressed and it was a trainwreck. He was booed and openly heckled, applause was tepid and halting (Word is the Romney campaign made sure some supporters attended, maybe they were just too embarassed to clap at times). Funniest goddamn thing: At several points, after it was clear just how bad this would be, someone on the organ keyed dramatic notes in a sort of comedic pitch, the kind you hear when a bad guy wearing a black fedora is twirling his mustache. I can’t imagine who in the Romney campaign thought this was a good idea, but they were wrong.
Aside from that, the speech was full of the usual whoppers, main difference being Mittens wasn’t speaking to the indoctrinated ditto heads he typically enjoys. Politico has a recap of some of it here.
Several polls showing President Obama leading nationally and gaining in key battleground states emerged this week. One of the most surprising cross tabbed married vs single voters: [Read more…]
It’s rather beautiful in its alien cloudy-ness. The Derecho. A rare phenomenon characterized by a shelf of low, ominous clouds leading sustained winds, at times exceeding hurricane strength, trailing thunderstorms and sometimes hail in its wake. An unusually violent and gigantic Derecho was herald for some of the storms that hit the east a few days ago (I think I flew through one of these once, see below). Speaking of weather, we keep on rolling snakes eyes: [Read more…]
There is a mini debate over how long Mitt Romney worked at Bain Capital. Reason being, while Bain did the usual nasty raider shit before Romney’s self reported departure in Feb 99, some of the more politically damaging activity occurred after. David Corn at Mother Jones makes a great point, opposing other orgs that side with the Romney campaign: in document after document, over 60 total, filed with the SEC and subject to penalty of perjury, Mitt Romney is named in one way or another as a principal well after the date in question: [Read more…]
If you’re not sure who David Barton is, think of Ken Ham or Kent Hovind: Barton is to history what old fashioned young earth creationists are to science. He peddles books and DVD’s riddled with fake quotes and other inaccuracies pushing the idea that America’s founders were really all about a Christian theocracy. Which is why Alabama Public TV recently passed on a suggestion to air two of Barton’s fake documentaries. I just got wind of what happened next: [Read more…]
Police are notorious for confiscating cameras and footage of their conduct, regardless of what local statutes or the Constitution say. Now the ACLU has created an app for Droids that lets users record secretly and back it up off site instantly: [Read more…]