I’m watching an H2 program called Civilization Lost, covering little-known sites that hint at entire civilizations that have been lost to history, the segment on the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe was striking to me. The History 2 channel seems to be slightly more “woo-woo ancient aliens!1!” than the regular History channel. Also covered: Varna, Tel Hamoukar, the Minoan culture, and others. Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had…
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The future will be brighter, more colorful, and easier to navigate for all us Baby Boomers, so we’d better start thinking about the custom paint jobs and pinstriping we want on our Hoverrounds and Rascals. Oy. CHARLOTTE, N.C — CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Easier-to-chew foods, brighter lights in stores and bigger, clearer fonts on packaging: Those are a few of the changes marketers discussed at a conference Friday about how to sell to aging consumers. via Companies set sights on aging consumers | McClatchy
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I’ve turned off a couple of auto-post features for now, at least through the end of the political season. The Twitter Tools plugin has a “create daily or weekly post from tweets” feature, I’ve turned off the weekly tweets posts as my usage has spiked, probably to an annoying degree, on my main account. I’ll migrate the political and topical news commentary and reaction to a different account, and pare my “follows” back to more personal topics on the main account. I’d rather not irritate my real-life friends and acquaintances further with my current interest with the political process. It’s…
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Ran across this just now via a Twitter link, great site and nice formatting, too. I’ve been wondering about this false narrative of failure, too. It’s another example of political projection; they’re still sore that “George W. Bush was a miserable failure” in the Googles. Obama has been a lot more successful than Republican obstructionism ought to have allowed him to be; guess we can add “Republican obstructionism is a miserable failure” to their list of dubious accomplishments In Republican reality, President Obama is a failure. You’d only suggest otherwise for purposes of making a joke. But in reality, the…
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On a whim, I looked once again to see if there’s a way to set WinAmp up to “scrobble” streaming radio, and it appears not… but one word at the Last.fm support site said simply “clementine” and that seems to do the job nicely. Built in support for Last.fm, Grooveshark, Spotify, and a few other services. There’s a ton of Internet radio stations to explore, and it’s relatively simple to set up playlists with my favorite Radio Riel streams, plus stations I’ve encountered on trips and local stations too. The Last.fm feed is put into my sidebar using a plugin…
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My dad was redheaded, so was his brother and (I think) his father. His mom had dark hair but there was some redheadedness on her side. My mom had auburn hair and heard a few family jokes about being the red-headed stepchild (the trait was lurking on both sides). My redheadedness genes die with me as I never felt the least stirrings of parenthood, but now I feel less genetic guilt about not passing along my recessive genes. Yay! As a redheaded science journalist, I hear this “fact” a lot. Reality is, though, we arent going anywhere. Yes, as Cara…
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The opportunity for Equity Specialty Holdings was simple. Its management could invest in insurers that badly needed to cover losses due to 9/11, and reap enormous benefit from the increased fees that the surviving insurance companies could then charge. The results were astounding: “Over the next nine months, the company generated a net income of $63.5 million. By the end of 2003, the company was reporting net income of $263.4 million.â€The Romney family disavows any knowledge or responsibility for this investment, saying that their money is in a blind trust. Famously, Romney dismissed Ted Kennedy’s identical response in 1994, ridiculing…
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This lack of empathy is one of the creepy-chilling things about Romney, and is an insight into the way he would interact with the kinds of people he is not programmed to understand. Romneybot2012 understands “family” to mean man-woman-children. Romneybot2012 has no comprehension of why anyone would choose not to follow this plan, which comes from God and must not be rejected. No matter how they try to make Romney appear to be a warm, caring human being they will never succeed in changing his core program. He’s a political-advantage calculator in Mom Jeans. I’ve read the account of what…
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This excellent quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Reality) was buried in the comments of the Daily Kos post on the Medicaid issue gaining traction. It would be very interesting to see either Romney or Ryan squirm while attempting to comment on this. Their rigidly imposed frame of reference prevents them from seeing that the GOP is in danger of becoming just such a negligible, stupid party, if it hasn’t already. The original commenter’s blog is called Condemned To Repeat It “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you…
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I saw this on Digby’s blog and read and re-read it several times today, trying to figure it out. On NBC’s “Meet The Press,†Romney dodged multiple questions about which deductions or credits he’d target, saying only that he’ll get rid of “some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end†while seeking to “lower the burden on middle income people.â€Pressed for one specific example, Romney replied, “Well, the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the heart of my policy.†via Romney Refuses To Offer Details On His Tax Plan | TPM2012 All will become…