Who Made That Emoticon? — The history of a simple thing. I also like the list of Japanese emoticons. (Via my Dad.)
Mehrangarh Fort — More amazing South Asian architecture from BLDGBLOG.
Psoriasis drug 'slows dementia' mice study suggests — Drugs used to calm inflammation in psoriasis may also help to combat the effects of Alzheimer's disease, a study on mice suggests.
Newly evolved gene may have changed humans' brains — Not the only gene that separates us from other apes, but an interesting one.
Antarctic marine wildlife is under threat, study finds — This "science", with it's liberally-biased "data" and "facts", can of course be safely ignored by the ideologically correct conservative. For the rest of us who actually live in reality, it's scary stuff.
Boeing Said It Will Deny Equal Pension Benefits to Married Gay Couples — Classy move, Boeing. And this will save just how much for your bottom line and the benefit of your stockholders. How typically conservative, to trade away ethics for profit.
Susan Rice And The Power Of Postracial Thinking — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the nonsensical GOP attacks on Susan Rice.
Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy — This is the dreadful evil that we do in the world today, that most Americans are barely aware of. That we would never allow on our own soil.
Sale of Guns Soar Following Election — Because the Obama administration did so much to curb gun rights during his first term. Or not. This is another example of what I keep saying — liberal-progressives fear conservatives because of what conservatives themselves say they will do, conservatives fear liberal-progressives because of what conservatives themselves imagine those liberal-progressives might do. It's just another facet of the endless GOP War on Reality.
The religious liberty right to believe that algebra is an abortifacient — Say you have a public school student who is an observant Jew. That student has a reasonable religious liberty objection to being offered only school lunches containing pork. But what if this student were to refuse school lunches containing beef, asserting that he believes beef to come from pigs and therefore to violate his religious commitment to keeping kosher. Does the school have an obligation to accommodate the delusional belief that beef comes from pigs? Tyndale House says yes. The Christian publisher says it has a right to its own sectarian facts and sectarian reality, and that no such thing as objective truth exists that might constrain that. Slacktivist Fred Clark with more on the endless lunacy that is the Religious Right. And remember, these nuts are the backbone of the GOP. Every time you vote Republican, you're voting to further empower this intellectual cesspool as a prime mover in American government and policy.
Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old — [T]his economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like. If the Earth is 9,000 years old, then virtually the entire construct of modern science is simply wrong. Not only that, most of the technology that we rely on most likely wouldn’t work – as they’re dependent on science that operates on the same physical laws that demonstrate the age of the universe. Speaking of the intellectual cesspool that is the Religious Right. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)
Walter Russell Mead and the “Fretting” Realists — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on Obama's likely cabinet changes. [A]voiding groupthink and excessive uniformity [in the Cabinet] would be desirable no matter what the prevailing view happened to be. While quite true and to the point, this is an odd comment, to say the least, coming from a conservative. The Republican collection of intellectual and policy litmus tests, and their ferocious punishment of any of their own who stray, make the old bugaboo of "political correctness" look like a playground game. Thanks to figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist, as well the eternal pandering to their deeply irrational and paranoid base, the GOP is about nothing if not about groupthink and uniformity.
?otD: Are you alarmed now? Shouldn't you be?
11/26/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,600 words to finish "Rock of Ages" in first draft)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (30 minutes on stationary bike)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 219.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block shutting down Evangelical churches and closing gun shops: 0
Currently reading: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold