Balls and Walnuts
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King Kong: the academic review
Time for a quickie before my meeting.
Know what I love about the journals Science and Nature? They’re not above reviewing popular books and movies, provided there’s some shred of scientific relevance. For example, back in ’04, physicist/climatologist Myles Allen reviewed The Day After Tomorrow (Nature 429:347-348), which you’ll remember as the uber-silly global warming movie with decent special effects and Jake Gyllenhaal as the braniac son of Dennis Quaid — the kid who failed calculus because he solved all the test questions in his head and didn’t bother to write them down — and what kind of idiot doesn’t learn in elementary school to show his work? But anyway.
Myles Allen wrote a kickass review. I still refer back to it on occasion to learn style points. I especially like his two-liner, “A medic watching this film would learn as much about climate as I would learn about cardiology watching ER — not nothing, but I would prefer the surgeon standing over me with a scalpel, or the politician pondering my petrol taxes, to have had some additional training. So I find the fuss about the film’s possible impact on climate policy rather disturbing.”
I gotta say, it’s fun getting the skinny from folks who know:
Kos biography
The San Francisco Chronicle has a fine article on Daily Kos’ creator Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. It includes the most complete biography on Markos I’ve ever seen. If you admire this guy as much as I do, check it out.
This bit reminded me of Jurassic Pork’s post last week, Walk the Line. JP, does this sound familiar?
As Daily Kos has taken off, life has changed for the family. Elisa said her husband has gotten death threats. A couple of her friends who have Republican spouses no longer want to socialize with them because of what’s on the blog.
“Me, I never talk about politics or religion with somebody unless I know we agree,” Elisa said, who doesn’t visit Daily Kos every day. “But Markos, he likes to debate everything. He’ll say, ‘I can’t believe you feel that way. That’s so stupid.’ ”
Anyway . . . I have a committee meeting tonight, so I may or may not have the energy to blog. Stay tuned.
Have I mentioned our upcoming trip to Las Vegas? Jake and I will be in Vegas from the 12th to the 16th, something like that. Karen’s still recovering from her fractures, so she gets to take a pass on this. As for Jake and I, our main goal is to make it to Red Rock Canyon for some rockclimbing. That, and go to a REAL bookstore.
D.
Who’s smiling now?
From this morning’s NY Times:
WASHINGTON, April 3 — Representative Tom DeLay, the relentless Texan who helped lead House Republicans to power but became ensnared in a corruption scandal, has decided to leave Congress, House officials said Monday night.
What are the bright people saying? Here’s Digby:
They claimed that Delay was the personification of conservatism and by God he is. He’s a crook and a coward. All these pontificating rightwing “moral majority” gasbags backed him to the hilt.
That’s your modern Republican Party for you.
And here’s Kos:
And Republicans will pretend that all of DeLay’s sins will wash away and no longer affect congressional Republicans. And the media bots will dutifully repeat that spin.
Except that every Republican in Congress enabled DeLay. They all fed from his trough. They even tried to change House rules to allow him to continue serving as House leader while under indictment. And DeLay’s cowardly resignation is further proof of just how corrupt and corrosive he really was.
This early, I don’t have the stomach to see what the wingnuts are saying.
D.
Technorati tag: Tom Delay
Internal consistency check
For Smart Bitches Day, I thought it would be fun to see if my views on the romance genre are stable over time, or if I am thoroughly full of shit.
Remember the post where I went on and on about what I wanted from a romance novel? Well, I found one I really, really liked: Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me, recommended by the wonderful, insightful Darla.
Fettuccini and clams
This recipe is not that tough. How do so many restaurants manage ruin it?
Easy: canned clams. If you don’t have access to fresh clams, keep your distance from this recipe.
Leucistic critters
Guess I’m not un-blocked yet, because I allowed the evil Lyn Cash to distract me with her wonderful links — primarily the Brokeback Mountain Happy Meal video, through which I discovered the LA sketch comedy group Fries on the Side.
I’ve filed them under “food.” Had to watch every one of their videos. Had to. My favorites: Default Date, Walken & Walken, and She’s Special.
Then I got sidetracked onto banned commercials at Google Video, like this Mastercard commercial. Damn it. Another 90 minutes down the tube, watching every funny commercial video I could find. Here’s another one, double damn it.
Back to Lyn. Top o’ the blog at the moment is a photo of a leucistic peacock. For those of you not into critters, leucistic animals are starkly white, unlike albino animals, which often retain some pigment. Leucistics have pigmented eyes, while albinos have pink eyes due to a lack of pigment.
Follow the links for examples of a leucistic ball python, albino ball python, and a normal ball python. Just to mix things up, here’s a piebald ball python, part leucistic, part wildtype pigmentation.
I couldn’t find much detail on the biology of leucism — just this brief Wikipedia article. The biology of albinism is well understood, however.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see how many different leucistic animal pictures I could find on the web. Here are some good ones:
I have no excuse for not working on my book today, none at all. I need a good kick in the ass, that’s what I need.
D.
Results of the Great 2006 Scone-Off
Our contestants: Beth and Kate. Click links to get the recipes.
Procedure: With meticulous care, I mixed my dried cranberries and cherries in one bowl so that each recipe would have identical fruit. I set everything up so that I could combine my wet and dry ingredients with something approximating simultaneity, in order to bake them all together. Unfortunately, I forgot to add the butter in Beth’s recipe.