Popsicle sticks, cowboy love, and atheism
Posted in Humor, Uncategorized, Web Videos on Jul 21st, 2008
What more do you need?
Posted in Humor, Uncategorized, Web Videos on Jul 21st, 2008
What more do you need?
Posted in Birds, Saturday Birds on Jul 19th, 2008
Is living in sin or being a lesbian an Amazing Thing? I think so, if you’re a Greylag goose or a Roseate tern:
Same-sex parenting in birds
I don’t know the precise word for what Greylags do; polyandry usually means that the female mates with both males, which isn’t the case here. And I’m a [...]
Posted in History on Jul 17th, 2008
So I found this in William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, from 1960, which I’ve been reading through since I found a first edition while I was out antiquing with David. Shirer is fleshing out the organizational structure and leading figures of the S.A. (the Sturmabteilung, or stormtroopers: paunchy, stupid, [...]
Posted in Birds, WANT Wednesdays on Jul 16th, 2008
Waffles started a good thing with WANT Wednesdays. I’d like to join in and point out that it would be awful nice to have a goose:
Valentino is a domestic breed, so I don’t think they’re running… afoul… of any wildlife protection laws by keeping her. (The wild Swan Goose is the other species, besides the [...]
Posted in WANT Wednesdays on Jul 15th, 2008
Ironically enough, here at the Ozark Outdoors, we get a wi-fi signal but no cell reception. It’s weak, but enough to create a short blog post. It’s been fun, sort of, but here are the two things I want right now.
My home
—AND—
My cat.
In a couple of days, I’ll post some awesome pictures from Onondaga Caves, [...]
Posted in Humor, Web Videos, Wildlife on Jul 15th, 2008
After the cracker fiasco, we need something a little more light-hearted. Here, watch these squirrels fighting:
Squirrel Fight
Posted in Blogging about Blogging, Free Speech, Freethought on Jul 14th, 2008
You’ll notice, of course, that in my pro-P.Z. letter to President Bruininks, I pretty much avoided the core issue. To a large extent, it’s irrelevant: P.Z. enjoys free-speech rights, particularly on a private blog that’s unaffiliated with the university, and anyway, he has tenure. Any organized campaign to pressure the university to take action [...]
Posted in Birds, Saturday Birds, Uncategorized on Jul 12th, 2008
Last week we had a bird that can dance. This week, how about one that’s mastered interior decoration and landscaping?
Ornithology – David Attenborough – “The Bowerbird”
I really, really love bowerbirds. Their display behavior is a fascinating example of sexual selection, and their capacity to make individual aesthetic choices raises intriguing philosophical questions. [...]
Posted in At the Waffle House on Jul 12th, 2008
Friends,
We at the Waffle House are leaving for vacation tomorrow, and will be out until Wednesday. That means WANT Wednesday will probably be a little late. I won’t have Internet access while I’m gone, so if I’m still alive when I get back, I’ll start carrying on then.
Meanwhile, Butter, keep ‘em infotained for me, willya?
See [...]
Posted in Blogging about Blogging, Free Speech, Freethought on Jul 11th, 2008
So there’s a little kerfluffle over at Pharyngula about P.Z. making fun of some
crackers. Basically, Bill Donahue and the Catholic League got their dander up about some kid absconding from Mass with a Eucharist wafer (which is totally the body of the Lord Jesus, even though it seems to every empirical investigator to be [...]