Quiche Moraine

What was that sound? A hand-cranked railroad cart that needed oiling? An old firetruck with a broken siren? A group of boy scouts with a dying hippopotamus?

No, no, not a hippopotamus. Too artifactual sounding. Too human-made sounding. More like the siren, like an old fashioned air raid siren. And as I listened, not only did it get louder, but I had the distinct impression that it was getting closer.

…one more day of sewage after 300 years of wanton effluence by the good people of Waterford, New York would make very little difference…

I hope we can see an Eat Street shuttle some time in the near future.

… if you are having trouble coming up with something to write, just read this post. I’m sure it will cause inspiration.

All utterances are questionable. All communications are subject to measurement against a standard that one can easily justify even though one has merely pulled it out of one orifice or another. There is a place where this kind of communication is favored, revered, honed and practiced, and imposed by force of will and repetition on those who do not come to the table armed with snark and oppositional in affect.

That place is known…as the blogosphere.

This Friday, Stephanie Zvan will join Desiree Schell and two other guests on Skeptically Speaking to discuss Skepticism and Race.

On the next episode of Skeptically Speaking, a panel discussion on skepticism and race. Is the face of modern skepticism really as monochrome as it appears? How do we make our message appeal to a broader, more diverse audience? And how do racial demographics influence belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal?

Our panel includes LaVerne Knight-West, Stephanie Zvan, and Girl 6.

Friday, January 22nd, Live on line

Details here

For many topics of interest to the average person, there seem to be two utterly different and diametrically opposed worlds of information. These worlds are so different that one might be called “Normal World” and the other might be called “Bizarro World.” It is possible, in fact likely, that each of these worlds works the way it does in large part because the other world exists. Not just good and evil, right and wrong, obverse and reverse, but in true yin and yang fashion, one world is shaped by the shape of the other, and this can be said of both.

Heathrow is the world’s largest and busiest airport, second only to Schiphol in Amsterdam and JFK in New York. All three are eclipsed, of course, by O’Hare in Chicago and Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Here in Minnesota, we don’t get much snow. Minnesotans THINK they get lots of snow, because Minnesota is thought of as a wintry state. But the snowfall here is moderate, not great, in a typical year. If Minnesota were snowy, and Minnesotans could handle that, it would be hard to explain the 400 or so accidents that happen on the Twin Cities highways every time it snows.

Café Scientifique: Human Evolution and the Cooking of Food
Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Bryan-Lake Bowl Theater
Tickets $5-$12
Call 612-825-8949 for reservations

The cooking of food had a major impact on human evolution, thanks in large part to innovations and activities by females of our species. The invention of cooking transformed most environments on this planet into habitable ones. Anthropologist and popular science blogger Greg Laden explores the role of food and cooking in shaping our species and its evolutionary success.

Bell Museum