The Wife™ is having a bit of trouble with someone. Essentially, this asshat is acting like because she is a woman, he doesn't have to respond in a timely manner to shit he and he alone is authorized to approve ( Read more... )

I had a moment of extreme coincidence the other day. I spent the early part of the day transcribing a bit of interesting info from Oren Harman's The Price of Altruism. ( Let me share the coincidence. )

I have for several weeks now been contemplating subjects, as the phrase goes, way above my pay grade, specifically why today's economic woes might be far more severe than even a press known for glorying in maim and gore is willing to investigate. It's been difficult, to say the least. There is so much I simply don't know. Hey, don't believe me ( Read more... )

In his latest book, The Ecotechnic Future, John Michael Greer notes the problem of increasing yields in organic crops using the most obvious fertilizer source, one that literally falls out of farmers' asses:

So why has the world been unable to get its fertilizer together on this issue? What keeps composted humanure and urine from being a primary ( Read more... )

I started writing the Deist Miasma series with high hopes, but little else. I was missing something, a crucial piece of evidence (as opposed to suspicion) that may have finally surfaced. It's a preliminary study that requires some expansion, but it reinforced the niggling thoughts that started this series enough to motivate me to finish it. ( Onward, interested parties! )

"Also, 'shit' does have quite a noble semantic history. It comes from words relating to 'separate,' and is apparently related to the word "'science.'"

So says Rose George, author of The Big Necessity -- Adventures in the World of Human Waste in an interview* by The Economist. If true, this might explain my interest in both science and shit.

( Read more... )

Very recently, researchers led by Richard Lenski announced something momentous: For the first time in recorded scientific history, researchers have been able to observe evolutionary change in progress, confirming and refining Darwin's epochal 1859 theory on the genetic level.


( Read more... )

Many words have meanings commonly accepted today but of unknown origin. I may have stumbled upon one such: pure.

For example, look at the Online Etymology Dictionary's take on "purify":

c.1300, "free from spiritual pollution," from O.Fr. purifier (12c.), from L. purificare "to make pure," from purus "pure" (see pure) + root of facere "to make ( Read more... )

I started writing this in November, but faltered, and started again, and faltered again. I find the entire topic just too important to treat lightly, but too emotionally fraught to resort to the bludgeon of didactic accusation. Telling people "You're evil!" just gets you dismissed ( Read more... )

Back in (IRRC) Philosophy 102, Logic, we learned the dirty little secret of Victorian literature. Sherlock Holmes sometimes got it wrong.


( Read more... )