One Last Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

One last poetry entry. This is one I wrote myself. I was not going to post anything I wrote but Mrs. afarensis threatened to do horrible things if I didn’t. This is actually an older one and is stylistically much different from recent attempts…I should mention that it is about Bach…

Theme Song: Off the Bridge I Go

Since everybody else is taking it, I guess I will too

Your Theme Song is Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

“There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ship�s smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves.” You haven’t been feeling a lot lately, and you think that’s a good thing. The comfortable part is nice… but you should really work on numb.

What’s Your Theme Song?

Question of the Day: So What was Keith Richards Doing in the Tree Anyway?

According to ABC News Keith Richards has been hospitalized in New Zealand after falling out of a palm tree in Fiji…apparently, he is suffering from a concussion…Just goes to show, we are monkeys* after all….
* Yes, I know, I’ve linked to it before, it’s very profound so I’m linking to it again.

ABC Meme: Apparently, If All the Other ScienceBloggers Jumped Off A Bridge, I Would Too

Since all the other bloggers are doing I guess I will too…

This is Cool

A story on MSNBC talks about new attempts to carbon date the volcanic eruption on Santorini could revise the chronology of early Mediterranean history:

Overall, the radiocarbon results indicate that the formation and high point of the New Palace period of Crete, the wall paintings of Akrotiri, the Shaft Grave period of the Greek mainland, and the political changes on Cyprus all occurred before approximately 1600 B.C. This is not only about 100 years earlier than thought; it also implies that the overall cultural era involved lasted much longer than researchers had assumed.
The new chronology makes the world of New Palace Crete even more important and interesting, Manning said, turning the later 18th and 17th centuries B.C. into an exciting new “cultural cauldron” from which significant elements of European history may have originated.

How Cool Is That!

This is the second of the Ichthyostega posts…

Ichthyostega and the Origins of Land Vertebrates

I have a temp assignment for the next couple of days, so in the meantime I thought I would repost this from my archives. This is the first of two I wrote on the subject. After I wrote the first, as you will see, Per Ahlberg, was kind enough to send me the article so I wrote the second based on the info in the article….

Jon Stewart Blows It – Well Kind Of

The Daily Show just did a segment on the Bosnian pyramid! Coturnix would spin in his grave if he saw that – except he’s not really in his grave, but if he was, he would!

Global Warming: Unintended Consequences

A lot has been written about the impact of global warming, but an article on ABC News discusses an aspect I had never thought about before. The article discusses the public health aspects of global warming. The article mentions a number of cases that can be directly or indirectly linked to global warming. For example, what was thought to be an outbreak of the Norfolk virus, on an Alaskan cruise ship, turned out to be due to “…a type of cholera-like bacteria, Vibrio parahaemolyticus…” How is this possible?

Politics: More Republican Corruption and a Bad Sex Education Bill

The St. Louis Post Dispatch has another fine example of Republican corruption:

A prominent attorney pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he defrauded the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District out of $45,190 when he was its lawyer, and that he failed to pay taxes on about $540,000 of income 2002.
Charles E. Polk Jr., 45, of the 3400 block of Tiverton Drive in St. Charles, made the pleas in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of interstate transportation of funds obtained by fraud and one count of tax evasion.
In so doing, Polk avoided trial on the other 21 counts of the indictment, which alleged several fraud schemes as well as four other tax counts claiming he failed to pay taxes on an additional $1.4 million in income over four years.

Here are some of Polk’s other activities:

Prosecutors said Polk’s 2002 income included $382,000 paid to him by James Helenthal, a former Quincy, Ill., newspaper publisher who paid Polk the sum as an investment in a plan to file suit or lobby for benefits on behalf of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Polk’s activities in Oklahoma City prompted criticism, as some survivors claimed he had thrown around his connections to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to convince people to hire him. Polk was emcee at Ashcroft’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington in March 2001.
After the Oklahoma City effort collapsed, Helenthal filed a suit claiming that Polk had defrauded him. Last month a St. Louis County judge ruled that Polk must pay Helenthal $3.6 million.