It turns out that fish have been using “vocalization” for around 400 million years, similar to how birds and frogs use sounds to communicate. The BBC reports on July 17, 2008:
Professor Bass told BBC News: “We identified where this pattern generator developed in the brains of these fishes, and then we looked at where it was in frogs, birds and primates.”
The team discovered that the neural networks for vocalization were all situated in the same region.
“We stood back and said: ‘Oh my god, this is all in the same place’.
“It was astonishing how similar it was.”
Actually, it would be astonishing if it was in a completely different part of the brain…
I have no long-winded rant ready to unleash on anyone who might happen to stumble upon this post, but, the whole idea that the Bush administration can even entertain the prospect of getting away with this is, to say the least, disturbing.
When I first saw the article about the teenager accused of going to several police stations in Texas and delivering batches of cookies that smelled like pot but were actually laced with LSD, I figured it was another illustration for the “children left behind” files, the part of the chronicle where representatives from the upcoming generation are doing things that sound completely insane yet also so jaw-droppingly stupid.
But now it turns out that the allegations were actually the product of overactive imaginations of law enforcement officials (and their preliminary drug tests), and the charges have been dropped. What we actually have here is an episode of the “romper room,” featuring children of all ages left far, far behind:
On July 8, 2008, the Associated Press first reported:
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A teenager is suspected of delivering baskets of drug-laced treats to about a dozen police departments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to police who charged him Tuesday with LSD possession. At least three officers have gotten sick.
The 18-year-old man was arrested after taking cookies to the Lake Worth police station, said Brett McGuire, the suburb’s police chief. Officers there had been tipped off that someone was falsely claiming to deliver treats on behalf of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“Our officers took a good whiff and thought they smelled like marijuana,” McGuire said, adding that preliminary tests instead detected traces of LSD.
Christian Phillips was taken into custody and later charged with possession of the powerful hallucinogen, although the charge may be changed, McGuire said.
The suspect denied trying to contaminate the goodies or harm anyone and said one of his friends might have been smoking pot while Phillips was baking, McGuire said.
The suspect is not affiliated with MADD, the chief said.
which is what I had cut and pasted after I first read the story. Much of this clip has been scrubbed from the link where the article first appeared.
[T]he EMD Safety Bracelet from Lamperd Less Lethal is designed to make flying a fun experience once again. Just check out everything it can do:
Take the place of an airline boarding pass.
Contain personal information about the traveler.
Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage.
Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes.
That made my eye twitch. and then on April 18, 2008, Wired reports:
This is the worst air travel security idea I’ve heard of in a long time.
A Canadian company called Lamperd Less Lethal is promoting the EMD Safety Bracelet. It’s equipped with electro muscular disruption technology, which effectively short-circuits the central nervous system. Zap someone and they’ll be completely immobile for several minutes.
The technology isn’t new — cops and security guards have been using it for years in tasers. What’s new is the marketing approach. Lamperd is hawking the EMD bracelet as the ideal tool for fighting terrorists intent on taking over an airplane.
And they’re doing so with a blatantly exploitive promotional video.
Not being a Sonics fan, I do not have a stake in the team, but I see in the Sonics saga the potential fate of any professional sports team city that has the audacity to stand up and tell billionaires that they are going to have support their own investments.
What happened is this: Former owner and Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz sold the team after failing to get a many hundred million dollar handout form the city and state to renovate the arena they use and reap the profits from. After Schultz realized the people, still sore over the extortion the Seahawks and Mariners laid on them to get Qwest and Safeco Fields, respectively, weren’t gonna pony up for a new stadium, he bailed, selling the team to the group led by Clay Bennett, of Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma City picked up a basketball jones after Hurricane Katrina forced the Hornets to relocate to the capital of Flyover Country while their city was pumped out and rebuilding began. Since there is nothing to do in Oklahoma City, the arrival of the NBA was HUGE and the people came out to support the team.
Once the Hornets went back to New Orleans - because the value of a sports team to a city cannot be measured in dollars alone - Oklahoma City got itchy. Sensing opportunity as well as the realization that yes, a sports team has a value that can;t be measured in dollars alone, Bennett turned his sights on the Sonics.
Bennett promised Schultz and the city that he was not there to steal the team - despite internal emails which revealed he was telling his investors exactly the opposite. But even Schultz said he knew selling the team to a guy from Oklahoma City would spur the government into coughing up money for a new stadium.
So Bennett pledged to negotiate in good faith with the city and state to get his shiny new stadium, knowing full well that what he was asking for demanding was ridiculous. Everything went as expected - excepting the offers from other local cities that were also dismissed - and even the NBA Commissioner - and the guy that inducted Clay Bennett into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame - David Stern approved the outright theft of the team.
The owners, of course, were looking out for their own good, knowing that when they wanted shiny new showplaces for their product, their host cities would have no choice but pony up. After all, if the No. 13 market in the country could lose a team to Oklafuckinghoma ( No. 45), anyone could be next.
Apparently, James Dobson, the multi-millionaire president of one of the largest fundamentalist mega-church televangelical empires in the country is going to go after both Barack Obama’s views on Christianity and the Constitution during his daily Focus on the Family address tomorrow and he is apparently so proud of it he leaked it to the Associated Press:
As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution [...]
“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.
Dobson and [senior VP of FOF, Tom] Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.
“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”
What a fucking tool. According to the story, here’s why:
“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.
So Dobson, a war supporter who ignores “Thou shalt not kill” when it behooves him to do so (and does the exact kind of bible cherry-picking bullshit (Leviticus, anyone?) one would normally associate with “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview”) has the balls to talk about dragging biblical understanding through the gutter?
So the emo/punk/rock band Alkaline Trio has officially sold out to the point where I don’t think I will ever be able to hear one of their old songs without spitting.
Because not enough people think “dark punk” when they think of overpriced athletic shoes, the Trio’s teamed with Nike for to design a Trio-branded athletic shoe.
Makes me want to fucking vomit.
It’s one thing to license a song to a commercial to try and find a new audience. I may not like it, but I understand why bands do it. And in today’s day and age, where art, design and commercialism all swim in the same lane at the pool, it’s just another delivery system.
But teaming with motherfucking Nike? You have to be kidding me.
“Seeing the swoosh and our logo on one product is unbelievable,” singer/guitarist Matt Skiba said in a statement. “The shoe looks amazing and provides some insight into who we are.“
by twit Howard, I am so sorry about Beth O. She is a beautiful woman inside and out and I hope you can truly be the man that she loves, before it is too late and you lose her forever.
I’ve heard that on your radio show you like to express shock about how Beth O doesn’t poop that often. You don’t understand it, you see her eat, but then mysteriously (at least to you) there’s not the usual consequence of eating. I’ve heard that you’ve claimed to have gone to a doctor who couldn’t find a medical cause for why Beth doesn’t poop like healthy people do.
Suspected terrorists, subversives and people with sexually transmitted diseases will not be allowed to enter China for the Olympic games, its organisers said yesterday.
If it was required that everyone arrive with their TB and measles vaccinations in order, it would make sense from a public health standpoint, particularly for a city as densely populated as Beijing. However, banning people based on an infection spread primarily through sexual contact is entirely different.
Questions remain about what exactly the Chinese government means by this new requirement. Do they mean all STDs? Symptomatic ones? Nontreatable ones?
The reason this will likely irreparably damage the 2008 Olympics is because statistically, a policy like this will cause significant numbers of athletes and spectators to be barred from entering the country.
Well this is it, eh? June 3, the day of the last primaries. Obama has already won the delegate race for the nomination and we have finally reached the end of the road, right?
Very few people - including the Clinton Campaign - ever saw it going this far, but all things considered, it has been a very good primary season and when it comes down to the come down, Hillary may have actually helped Obama.
Thanks to her, he has already faced many of the bullshit character attacks, half-truths, whisper campaigns and the racism one would expect from a Republican candidate. Yet he has continued to gain popularity.
But while the campaign for the nomination has essentially been over since February, today has to be the end, right? After today she has no reason to keep going and will have to admit she lost, right?
But, nope, not Hillary. Even after Obama secures the nomination tonight, Hillary will refuse to let go, clinging tenaciously to the possibility that the party Gray Beards will overturn the will of party voters and give her the nomination despite that fact that she is unlikable and unable to draw people to her campaign:
Hillary Rodham Clinton will acknowledge Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign sources told the Associated Press.
After the report, her campaign promptly issued a statement saying, “Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening.”
Florida has been a distinct thorn in this country’s side since the year 2000, so the twit is beginning to think that maybe it is time to just let the state go once and for all. Perhaps we could vote on it…
[Port St. Lucie Department spokeswoman Michelle] Steele said the boy had been sent to the principal’s office because of disciplinary issues. When he returned, [the teacher] made him go to the front of the room as a form of punishment, she said.
… After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.
By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.
“Raw milk is like a magic food for children,” said Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates consumption of whole, natural foods.
because I don’t care if it has “health benefits” if it also is a serious health risk. Especially to kids.
More than 1,000 people, including two who died, got sick from raw milk or cheese made from raw milk from 1998 to 2005, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
even the FDA has got this one spelled out pretty clearly, although it is basic fucking germ theory, so it isn’t exactly asking a whole hell of a lot.
who needs to search for an appropriate metaphor when our tax dollars have written that giving a kid raw milk is like giving a kid a loaded gun with a bullet loaded at random:
WASHINGTON - China’s crackdown in Tibet will not cause President Bush to cancel his planned trip to the Beijing Olympics, the White House said Thursday.
… Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush’s position is that the Olympics “should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.”
She said that Bush, in accepting the invitation last year from Chinese President Hu Jintao to attend the Olympics, told him the games would “shine a spotlight on all things Chinese.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Perino added.
Bush agreed to go to the Olympics during a meeting with Hu in Australia last September during the Asia Pacific Economic Council meeting. A White House spokesman said at the time that Bush was going to the games for the sports and not for any political statement.
Yesterday, in response to a report that hundreds of Tibetans have been killed since March 10, 2008, lestro wondered, “what if they hosted an Olympics and no one came?” and that made a lot of sense when we were just looking at the reports collected by Boing Boing, including this:
It was impossible not to notice that the United States removed China from its list of top 10 human rights violators just as the biggest anti-China protests in 20 years erupted in Tibet.
[...] China had a chance to shine for its Olympic coming-out party and is blowing it. Its leaders will continue to have to battle protests and unrest — and endure international reproach — until they ensure more freedom for all their citizens, including greater religious tolerance and freedom for Tibet.
from the New York Times Editorial Board, that maybe missed a bit of news before going to print with the phrase ‘international reproach,’ because it turns out that when it comes to the Olympics, it is exactly the opposite:
The European Union is not in favor of a growing call for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics to express disapproval over China’s crackdown on pro-independent movements in Tibet.
[...] Russia even supported the Chinese government. In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, “Russia has repeatedly declared that it views Tibet as an inalienable part of China, and considers the resolution of relations with the Dalai Lama to be an internal matter of the People’s Republic of China.”
Even the Dalai Lama, although he condemned China for its rule of terror and cultural genocide, stopped short of calling for a boycott of the Olympic games.
[...] [Thomas Bach, German vice president of the International Olympic Committee] stressed sports organizations are not world governments and cannot solve problems that decades of international leaders and head of governments had tried, but likewise failed.
The Olympics are an international gesture of goodwill and an economic boom for the country hosting it. Historically, it has not been immune from being drawn into the fray of international conflicts. Fundamentally, it is a diplomatic exercise whether it wants to be or not.
The EPA should never have to “scramble” to “justify” something. If they do, that probably means that it is a bad move that the EPA shouldn’t have supported but had to because of the politicization of every goddamn agency in Washington.
This is yet another example of how this administration has forgotten that they are supposed to be there doing the people’s business and not that of their buddies. Kind of like the AG forgetting he’s the country’s lawyer, not the president’s.
The EPA officials are supposed to be scientists, not politicians and their findings are supposed to based on fact, not on campaign contributions or ideology.
EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA’s scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.
“It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA’s expert scientific judgment,” said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The president’s order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.
Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA’s past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.
“craft new legal justifications”? that’s fucking ridiculous. what that means, in basic english is “either make up the rules as we go along or change the rules to fit our needs.” and that’s no way to run a country.
Right off the bat, it is important to mention that I am not a fan of Florida. Most years I find myself rooting for hurricanes as they take aim on what Homer Simpson once called ‘America’s wang.’ I have nothing against Michigan, however.
This year, Florida and Michigan are acting like spoiled children who purposefully broke a toy and want a new one.
Late last year those two states voted to move their primaries ahead of every other state in an attempt to boost their own importance. It wasn’t enough that both play important roles in the fall, they wanted to be first.
The parties, looking at the already front-loaded schedule and the lateness of the attempt to leapfrog over everyone else, made the right decision and told the states that it would not be allowed and there would be consequences for their actions.
But Michigan and Florida threw a big ole tantrum and then not only took their balls and went home, they threw their balls onto the roof, moving their primaries to the front of the line, sticking their tongues out at the national parties and daring them to do something.
The Texas Democratic Party is warning that its March 4 caucuses could be delayed or disrupted after aides to White House hopeful Hillary Clinton raised the specter of an “imminent” lawsuit over its complicated delegate selection process, officials said Thursday night.
Texas party officials said they believed Cecil was threatening legal action and wrote a letter to him and to Obama senior strategist Steve Hildebrand reflecting that concern.
… The letter also noted that many of Clinton’s senior campaign advisers in Texas had helped to develop the rules governing the state’s caucus system. A Texas party official also noted that former President Clinton won the state’s caucuses in 1992 and 1996 following the same rules.
In an interview with Fox News, President Bush argued that if his agenda and record are made central issues in the upcoming presidential election, then the Republican nominee stands “a better chance of winning” because the election won’t be about him:
My attitude is, so long as they’re talking about me, we have a better chance of winning because our candidate will — what’s going to matter is not the past but the future when it comes to campaigns.
If the Democrat Party feels like they can win an election by focusing on me, I think they’d be making a huge tactical mistake. But I hope they do that then because our candidate will be able to talk about the future.
On Thursday’s “Tucker” on MSNBC, David Shuster, who was serving as guest-host of the program, made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. Shuster, who apologized this morning on MSNBC and will again this evening, has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts, other than to make his apology. He has also extended an apology to the Clinton family. NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks.
but the comment wasn’t about Chelsea. it was about Hillary being a pimp. Since when are we not allowed to call Hillary a pimp?
I managed to avoid reading this all day long, but then Slog had to go and make it impossible to miss while scrolling along:
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings. And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one).
just going to let this marinate for a second…
ahem.
YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!
That division of NOW once gave me an award a long time ago, back when I was a campus advocate and made it my mission to deny that feminism was a movement of women versus men. I campaigned against the idea that a woman or any person could be judged by their gender instead of their personal character. To see it implied that Hillary must be supported above a male candidate simply because she is a woman, it feels like NOW has committed the worst form of betrayal to the fundamental principles of feminism. Read the rest of this entry »
sometimes it’s the little things that say so much. For example, if you promise to stay away from Florida because the state was naughty and moved its primary ahead without the blessing of the DNC…
“Although Senator Obama did not remove his name from the Florida primary ballot because Florida law did not allow him to do so, Senator Obama is firm in his commitment to neither participate nor campaign in the Florida primary and its outcome has no bearing on the nomination contest,” Mr. Obama’s campaign said in a memorandum sent to “interested parties.”
yes, yes, of course…
Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to fly here on Sunday for two fund-raisers. Although the events are not open to the press or public — her aides said she would attend no public event that would result in her breaking her word — her arrival here the day after the South Carolina vote seems likely to produce coverage on Florida television stations and newspapers on the day before the vote. On Friday, her campaign issued a statement saying that she would urge her delegates at the Democratic convention this summer to seat the Florida delegation.
Though the Democratic presidential candidates largely have heeded the national party’s request that they not campaign publicly in Florida, Clinton said it’s time to pay attention to voters there who are showing heavy interest in Tuesday’s primary.
Change the rules at the last minute, parse the meaning of a clear statement until it is meaningless and be ready to justify the appearance of impropriety with a vague populist appeal. What a lovely combination for someone campaigning to lead the free world. I continue to search for exactly what it is about Hillary Clinton’s campaign that makes so many people recoil with a visceral and near-instinctive negative reaction. Maybe it is the little stories like these that have added up over time and feed the inexplicably amorphous sense of misgiving and distrust. Read the rest of this entry »
Clinton also said she was asked by other women “all the time” about what to do with unfaithful husbands.
“I say you have to be true to yourself, no one story is the same as any other story,” she said.
“‘I don’t know your reality. I cannot possibly substitute my judgment for yours, but what I can tell you is you must be true to yourself, you have to do what is right for you.’”
All this made possible today by The Tyra Banks Show. The Hillary YouTube channel promises its own dramatic footage, but at present, there is instead a video that talks about how cool Chelsea is, how original the Hillary is, whoop. ee. the. inspiration…
and if you dare try to escape that, you might fall into the rabbithole of playlists and propaganda from Clinton, Inc.
So here I am, driven half-mad by listening to Hillary give a ‘relaxed’ interview in the ‘ridin’-on-the-bus’ genre, that I dare not watch because the combo of watching a rocking countryside go by in the background is more than this chick can bear at the minute.
So I have a question for the brilliant genies out there who might be able to explain why we would ever want someone who thinks the White House is like a prison to have the responsibility of running it. Or someone who could seem so callous as to compare the lap of luxury at 1600 Pennsylvania to prison. Haven’t we had enough of the bubbled-in mentality? Don’t we want someone who believes they can make a difference?
As to the bit about those unfaithful husbands, I get what she is trying to say, the standard “You are the one with the most information about the situation and are therefore in the best position to decide what to do.” Classic empowerment chitchat, but instead of quitting while ahead, it seems to run amok.
One of the holy screeds of crisis intervention, as I understand it at least, is that the idea of responding to a random request for help is to give people a sense of their options. Telling people what they “must” and “have” to do is out of bounds.
So until the video evidence can be carefully examined and reviewed, such is the rant.
UPDATE: oh, oh, the video… she never doubted bubba’s love. never? not even a teensy weensy little bit?
hmm… I can’t get the video from Wonkette to embed.
Thus concludes the pundit improv session for the night.
“In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.”
Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport.
The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms “have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
public restrooms. expectation of privacy.
That means the state cannot prove Craig was inviting an undercover officer to have sex in public, the ACLU wrote.
::: crickets :::
… The ACLU argued that even if Craig was inviting the officer to have sex, his actions wouldn’t be illegal.
“The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom,” the ACLU wrote in its brief.
the ACLU is arguing that sex in public bathrooms is ok and to solicit sex in bathrooms is ok. what’s the definition of sexual harassment? a little wrong place at the wrong time, a little disorderly conduct in inappropriate public venues?
The ACLU also noted that Craig was originally charged with interference with privacy, which it said was an admission by the state that people in the bathroom stall expect privacy.
It’s called GET A ROOM.
see “uh oh here comes the waiter” @ about 2:35 via YouTube:
by twit
by squishmael
by lestro
Howard, I am so sorry about Beth O. She is a beautiful woman inside and out and I hope you can truly be the man that she loves, before it is too late and you lose her forever.
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