··· Wow, if you dislike neoconservatism, or just like reading about sociology, please check out this LJ post and the two links right at the end. The post gives some details about a representative poll of 1,000 Americans, cross-referenced with other polls, that was used to determine what I'll call belief associations. I.e., people who believe a, b and c statistically often believe d, e and f. A...

Back in April, the San Francisco Chronicle posted a human interest piece announcing that the Bay Area Tarantula Society was holding their Spring Sling Fling at the Concord Veterans' Hall. I've always been fascinated by creepy-crawlies. When I was young, and Dad had a compost heap in the back yard (our "worm pile"), I would dig around in it and fish out big old night crawlers. When the tree...

While illness and busyness have kept me from cranking out stories for some last lines , I am working on them. maradydd 's last line inspired a big world-building story. This is a first draft, and I don't know if I did the idea in my head much justice. It's a 3K story, rather long for an exercise of this kind, more of a character piece than a plot piece. Still, hope you enjoy what happens...

Sometimes the best response to intimidation is laughter, and staghounds provides the lulz . Think we can get T-Pain for this version too?

http://maradydd.livejournal.com/471673.html Archangel out

There's a fair amount far-right nuttiness on-line and in person. From the massively homophobic screed by SF author John Wright to far-right activists shouting about "death panels" at public discussions of healthcare, public discourse in the US has gotten rather more strange and extreme than usual. In reading about both the various incidents and also several excellent analyses of what's going in...

Snagged from maradydd 1.Take a picture of yourself right now. 2.Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture. 3.Post that picture with NO editing. 4.Post these instructions with your picture.

It's been really hard to get myself over my jet lag, between being sick and having no obligations until noon. I couldn't get to sleep until 4am last night, so I snoozed from 10 until nearly 11... got up for a bit, read, ... and fell back asleep for another hour and a half. Finally decided it was time to drag my sorry ass outside; met up with maradydd and went shopping. Came back with a new...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my fellow Walpurgis-nauts! Apr 29th — blessure Apr 30th — maradydd & aprman May 1st — and, of course, yours truly By the way, I am officially getting younger starting tomorrow. *begins furiously gluing his telomeres back together* Ha! Take that F. Scott Fitzgerald ! "Faust und Mephisto", Luis Ricardo Faléro (1880) ...

Drinking straw electrophoresis . I'm trying to interest a few undergrads in doing this with high school students.