Thing2 - Mommy, why do you look nice today?

me - Why do you ask?? Do i have to look shit all the time?

Thing 1 and Thing 2 (in unison while laughing) YES!

me - Fuck you.

Thing1 - ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Good one, mom.

Thing2 - ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! No, really, why do you look so nice today?

While on vacation in California, I was having a discussion with my wife (an atmospheric scientist), and a friend (an archaeologist). I am a Developmental Geneticist. So we were three scientists from three very disparate fields. I have been a scientist for 20 years. My wife for much shorter time and my friend for much, much longer. So we come at it from different chronological perspectives.

And one thing we each have encountered is the huge lack in science of the reporting of negative results. There is a perception in science that one must prove your hypothesis correct or it is not worth reporting. So when someone posits a hypothesis and DISPROVES it (which is common and healthy in science) they cannot publish it until it can be paired with related positive data. That often doesn't happen for years and sometimes is never published if the work goes in a different direction. This, of course, leads to many people repeating the same negative data over and over because they are unaware that it has already been disproven already by many other researchers.

This can be quite a waste of time and resources.  more this way»

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Last week a huckster from Australia declared Jeff Goldblum had died in New Zealand and media all around the world proceed to repeat the hoax. I actually saw on @Twitter that, contrary to the reports, the man was in New York City filming a tv show.

Well, Stephen Colbert milked it for all what it was worth. Watch how they play up the "if it was on @Twitter, it must be true" meme. And witness what true comedic talent is as Jeff, to wit, agrees.

 more this way»

About time Coleman v. Franken (PDF of case A09-697)was decided and in this case, unanimously:

1. Appellants did not establish that, by requiring proof that statutory absentee voting standards were satisfied before counting a rejected absentee ballot, the trial court's decision constituted a post-election change in standards that violates substantive due process.

2. Appellants did not prove that either the trial court or local election officials violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

3. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded additional evidence.

4. Inspection of ballots under Minn. Stat. § 209.06 (2008) is available only on a showing that the requesting party cannot properly be prepared for trial without an inspection. Because appellants made no such showing here, the trial court did not err in denying inspection.

5. The trial court did not err when it included in the final election tally the election day returns of a precinct in which some ballots were lost before the manual recount.

Affirmed. Per Curiam.

 more this way»

The Personal Democracy Forum conference is in full force right now and people retweeted poignantly Andrew Rasiej's morning lament about the lack of black and brown faces in the crowd. Among the tweets, Cheryl Contee's stood out because, as a woman of color, she mused maybe young people needed to have some fellowships to make it to the conference.

That would be nice, but ... I mean, really? The lack of young black faces in the crowd is the problem? Seriously?

Here's my question because am looking at the problem from the place of a woman who has to 16-20 hrs on web development projects to put food on my kids table and maybe scrape together an indie project or two of my own: What have you (the general YOU of infuencers, movers and shakers whose job seems to be to go exclusively from one tech and media conference to the other) done lately to support black and brown owned blog publishing and web-centric companies?

Yeah, am asking for specifics. I really want to know what exact steps have you taken to help a black or brown blog or webpreneur.  more this way»

One of the unknown little snowflakes of the Christian Conservative movement twitters: The current trending topics make me sad for America.. Her twitter friend, a genius that goes by Sum_Dum_Guy (and in the process gives all homeschoolers a bad name) agrees that BET and/or black music related topics trending on Twitter somehow are the thing of massive doses of anti-depressants.

It's why they are both featured in OMG! BLACK PEOPLE!, a Tumblr page dedicated to collecting all the "OMG! theres black people on twitter" comments that seem to have arisen out of the intense twittering of people watching the BET Awards. And let me stress the "raceless" use of the word people, because obviously it wasn't just black folks watching and ranting last night.

I mean, really ... #BET09 and black related topics trending are reasons to get their panties in a bunch or be sad about the state of the United States?  more this way»