Short and sweet, from Steve Gilliard:
If American troops:
Bitterly complain about the quality and courage of Iraqi troops
Call them racially derogatory names
Mock and taunt their children
Do not speak Arabic
How can they train an Iraqi Army worth a damn?
(Via The News Blog.)
Mary Cheney's Bundle of Joy, makes an excellent point, although he's a bit too genteel to come out and say it:
Such religious leaders [ones who are supporting environmental protection and AIDS research] may not have given up their opposition to abortion or gay marriage, but they have more pressing priorities. They seem to have figured out, as Mr. Kuo has said, that “politicians use Christian voters for their money and for their votes” and give them little in return except a reputation for bigotry and heartless opposition to the lifesaving potential of stem-cell research.
Nosy scientists find people are able to trail scents just like dogs do
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Dogs won't have to roll over any time soon, but they have unexpected competition in a field they've long dominated.
Just like canines, many humans are able to sniff the ground, pick up a faint scent and successfully track it.
The surprising discovery, made by researchers in the United States who are trying to figure out the mystery of why mammals have two nostrils, suggests that people have a much more highly developed sense of smell than is commonly thought.
The researchers found that about two out of three people given the kind of task that would be the joy of any hound managed to find and follow a scent trail spread on a grass field -- a very pleasing scent to humans: a faint whiff of chocolate spread along 10 metres.
A paper published in the January issue of Nature Neuroscience also found that humans get better with sniffing out a scent trail over time, which suggests that with lots of practice people may be capable of the kind of tracking previously thought to be the exclusive ability of other animals.
The researchers were the first to admit that having a group of 32 people, comprised mostly of university students, crawl across a field with their noses to the ground carried a whiff of the absurd.
"It seems a little wacky at first glance," said Rehan Khan, a senior scientist at the University of California Berkeley neuroscience department who worked on the project. "It's a very strange task for a human, but it's the most natural task in the world for most mammals."
He said the tracking test was part of an effort to figure out why mammals have two nostrils, something that isn't as readily apparent as the obvious utility of having two eyes, which give depth perception, and two ears, which allow for a more accurate sense of where a sound is coming from.
"All mammals have two nostrils, so we were interested in why is this? Nobody really had an answer to this question," Mr. Khan said.
People rely most heavily on their sense of sight, leading them to under-appreciate their olfactory abilities. "Because we do have this domination in our perception of vision, we don't think of ourselves as particularly good at smelling things compared to a dog, but that doesn't mean that we're terrible," Mr. Khan said.
By taping one nostril shut, the researchers were able to show that people were far worse at tracking, with the success rate dropping in half compared with both nostrils. That meant only one person in three was able to pick up the chocolate trail. There wasn't a significant difference in olfactory prowess by sex, with women and men performing about the same.
"Having two [nostrils] permits you to be a more efficient tracker of scents in your environment. In fact, if a dog only had one, we would predict a dog would be measurably worse," Mr. Khan said.
What seems to be happening is that each nostril draws air from distinct, non-overlapping areas, allowing people to sniff out scent from a wider area.
To find out whether humans got better with practice, the researchers had subjects train at sniffing out the trail three times a day, for three days. The speed of tracking more than doubled with even this short amount of practice.
During the experiment, the test subjects were blindfolded, given full body suits, and wore gloves and earplugs to make sure they were relying only on their sense of smell to find the trail.
When people first try to sniff out a trail blindfolded, it was disorienting. Some were confused, and had no idea of where they were, but "other people got down and they were able to get into it pretty quickly," according to Mr. Khan.
The tests were funded in part by the U.S. military. It is interested in finding out more about the sense of smell to develop devices that can track scents.
...but I know that you'd win instead:
Congratulations! You are the Time magazine "Person of the Year."
While vacancies aren't uncommon in the Senate, they can only occur ``by death or resignation,'' said Richard Baker, the Senate historian.
``There either has to be a death certificate or there has to be a letter of resignation,'' he said. ``Nobody has the power to determine a vacancy for a person who is still living.''
Some lawmakers in the past have kept their seats in spite of long illnesses.
In 1969, two years into his fourth term, South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt, a Republican, suffered a stroke and was unable to continue voting. He offered to resign on the condition that South Dakota's governor appoint Mundt's wife to fill the vacancy.
The governor refused, and Mundt kept the seat for the balance of the term, even while missing three years of votes. He remained on three committees until 1972, when the Senate Republican Conference stripped him of the assignments.
In the 1940s, Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, a Democrat, missed two years of votes due to illness. At age 87 and in failing health, he refused to retire even as newspapers from across his state pressured him to step aside.
'Mallard Fillmore' creator arrested for DUI | IndyStar.com:
Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department. Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond. On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.
Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.
Newt Gingrich is hard at work trying to out-hawk John McCain by suggesting that our new prescription for success in Iraq should be "victory or death." Now Gingrich has done it again: He's told an audience of power brokers in the key primary state of New Hampshire that we should be re-examining free speech in the age of terrorism, lest we "lose a city" to the terror threat. From the Manchester Union Leader:
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
At a press conference yesterday (summarized in this AP article), attended by Jesse Jackson, Paul Mooney and Maxine Waters, Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada said "the comedy club will ban comedians from using all "hateful words" including the "n-word."
Masada also said "We want to be the first place in the world to ask all of the comedians if they go on stage and use the 'n-word,' (it) comes out of their paycheck."
In this matter, there has been a suspicious lack of any talk of a slippery slope, a deafening silence from the usual defenders of free speech. This is not about the "n-word." It's about free expression in general. When Masada broadens his proscription to include "hateful words," he goes down a road that no one should go down. It is easy to imagine that the language and the work of comedians at the Factory might come under the scope of what amounts to a speech code. His blanket banning of a word (or ill-defined set of words) doesn't consider context, and it opens up every comedian who might work there to intense scrutiny. It quite possibly might have the effect of shutting them down. And then there is the matter of making them vulnerable to lawsuits or monetary extortion. (Masada himself has gone so far as to lead the charge when it comes to punishing comics who work his room and violate his speech code. What assurances does any comic who works there have that Masada would not throw him or her under the bus should a patron take offense to say, the use of the word "cunt?" Or maybe an attack on Christianity? Or a percieved slight of gay people?) By broadening the ban, Masada has declared open season on the "A-word," the "B-word"... you get the idea.
If Jesse Jackson can stand next to Masada and declare that the "n-word" is "unprotected" (his exact word!), then who is next in line? Will Andrea Dworkin exert sufficient pressure on Masada so that the "c-word" is banned (along with any comic who might dare to construct a joke using it)? Will Ralph Reed be sending registered letters to Masada in order to pressure him to ban comics who might offend the sensibilities of evangelicals? Let's take it to a far-fetched but perfectly logical extreme-- Will comics who ply the boards at the Factory be instructed not to say how much they hate cats lest PETA come down too hard on Masada? (If you think that's implausible note that PETA is trying to banish the term "pet" from the lexicon and replace it with "animal companion." In effect paving the way for legislation against any/all "animal ownership.") It seems like only yesterday that there were police detectives in Philadelphia and San Francisco taking notes during Lenny Bruce's shows. We can easily see a return to such an oppressive atmosphere.
I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.
I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor.
