Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Links

More and longer and prettier soon, but here is the usual presentation of friends, foes, follies, and gallimaufry, not to mention science..

Which first: a very old bat.

(Zimmer has also devoted a new site to his collection of "Science tattoos". Love that Archaeopteryx!)

The long- distant migrant known as the red knot is in deep trouble because of the human harvest of horseshoe crabs. I didn't even know there was one. HT Luisa.

Doom, doom, decline and fall. You couldn't make this up: as Scottish blogger Alex Massie reports, "A commuter was arrested at gunpoint and had his DNA and fingerprints taken simply for listening to his MP3 player while waiting for a bus."

It actually gets worse.

"Darren Nixon was surrounded by armed police after his music player was mistaken for a gun."

(snip)

"Police tracked Mr Nixon using CCTV. As he got off the bus home from work he was surrounded by a firearms unit, who bundled him into a van.

"He was then put in a cell and his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot were taken before he was released.

"Although police realised it was a false alarm, Mr Nixon, from Stoke-on-Trent, now has to live with his DNA stored on a national database.

"The force will also keep on record that he was arrested on suspicion of a firearms offence."

Words fail.

They don't make them like that anymore. (See above.)

Not the Onion, but you might think so from the title:"Parent Shock: Children are not Decor". Apparently some are annoyed at the clash. More vapidity from the former Paper of Record. Sigh. At least their science remains first- rate.

More Times: an aricle in praise of anti- hunt activists. What concerns me is this statement:

"Monitors have been beaten, kicked, whipped with riding crops, and driven into hedges by angry riders. Mr. Tillsley has been verbally abused, threatened and harassed. His tires have been slashed, his car followed and boxed in, and the windows of his house broken."

Oh, really? In modern England? And no charges brought? I just don't believe it.

On to cheerier things, Blogfamily stuff to be exact.

Moro Rogers has a wonderful U- Tube animation video out.

Mike at Sometimes Far Afield has some original things to say about the Second Amendment.

Darren discusses Axolotls and their relatives. Scroll down to a discussion between me and an expert as to what variety we have here-- I think "Lollia" nails it.

More & Worse soon...

2 comments:

Mike Spies said...

Read Mike's post on Far Afield. Aside from the careful parsing of the sentence structure, it is obvious, and went without saying, that the Second Amendment...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

...Is a prohibition on government infringment of this right. The entire Bill of Rights is a clear statement of what the government MAY NOT DO and was intended to codify the basis of the limitations of government under the Constitution.

The Brits may think we are crazy, but the item about the felonious MP3 player should provide some food for thought for those who care what other peoples think...

Heidi the Hick said...

I jsut read the article about CHILDREN ARE NOT DECOR.

Wow! This just reinforces my gratefulness that I had my kids at 23. I hadn't made enough money in that short time to go all Noguchi with my decor. (I would realistically be more likely to spend my money on horse stuff anyways...) We actually had maybe three pieces of hand me down furniture at that point. Our living room was like a bowling alley when the kids were tiny- a long empty stretch of hardwood!

It must be hard to change your life so drastically at age 40 to have a kid. But geez. Kid? Expensive delicate furniture? Which one do you choose?????

Bottom line: goodbye to the life you knew. End of story. Your babies do not care who you are/were when you go/ went to work!