Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Among the celebrities to sign that anti-war petition: Both leads from the X-Files - Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny Two aliens from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Rene "Odo" Auberjonois and Armin "Quark" Shimerman The dad from Married With Children, Ed O'Neill A guy whose hand I shook once - Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary Just about the entire freakin' cast of the West Wing and most surprising of all...Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon! Ok, that's not exactly shocking... =)

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Well, great. It sounds like terrorists almost got their hands on Scuds. They've found at least a dozen Scuds on a ship headed towards the Horn of Africa from North Korea...and, well, it's not like Ethiopia, Eritrea, or Djibouti is going to be buying mid-range ballistic missiles any time soon. Somalia is, of course, a total anarchy, with al Qaeda allies controlling a good swath of it. Just something to make your night a little more cozy...

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I just spent 45 minutes wandering around my neighborhood, trying to find cheese. Seriously. I need cheddar for the casserole I'm making for dinner tonight, and completely forgot to get some while I was at the grocery store. Of course, I remember this just as traffic is as about as bad as it ever gets here, so it'd take twenty minutes to drive to the grocery store, twenty minutes to just buy one item at the grocery store, and then twenty minutes to drive BACK from the grocery store. I think to myself - c'mon, I live in an urban area. There's "convenience" stores all over the place. Surely one of them has CHEESE. Well, yes, one does. But it's the 8th store I tried. Seriously. All these identical convenience stores had the exact same stuff in them...until I made to a Store 24 about half a mile away. I didn't actually know there WAS a Store 24 up there - turns out there's a whole lot of stuff just up the road that I never noticed. But anyway, I got my cheese, but felt kind of silly walking home. I mean, c'mon. 45 minutes to find cheese? What's wrong with me?

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Makin' Bones About Bones. Atapuerca (in Spanish, with incomplete English translation) is the site of the earliest European hominid ancestors yet found in Europe. Two of the most stunning finds are Gran Dolina, where the first Homo antecessor fossils were found, and Sima de los Huesos, site of the most complete Homo heidelbergensis fossils ever excavated. And soon: an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York. I know my plans for January 11th. [MetaFilter] Ooooh...

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Cracks open in Iran judiciary. A senior member of the conservative judiciary offers his resignation in protest at the death sentence imposed on a reformist academic. [BBC News | World | UK Edition] More specifically, the spokesman for the judiciary, Hussain Mir-Mohammad Sadeghi, has offered his resignation. That's right - the public face of one of the most conservative institutions in Islamist Iran has said that the death sentence on Hashem Aghajari "had catastrophic consequences for the judiciary and the country as a whole." Damn.

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USS Bush [BBC World] Ok, this actually makes a bit of sense. Yes, Bush the Elder is still alive, but he was a naval aviator, so naming an aircraft carrier after him isn't completely unrelated, a la the USS Ronald Reagan...
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An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal. Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago east of India, are direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia. By Nicholas Wade. [New York Times: Science] Further detail on the story I mentioned below, explaining, among other things, how there seem to be two original waves of emigration from Africa to Asia, and the genetic evidence to back that up...

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When doves cry. Washington dispatch: Want to find out about the anti-war movement in America? Forget network news and tune in to Jerry Springer, says Duncan Campbell. [Guardian Unlimited] It took Jerry Springer, of all people, to say the unsayable - that most ordinary Americans are very keen on tackling Osama bin Laden and al Qaida, but have no great interest in extending the war to Iraq. All a war would achieve, he said, would be to create a whole new generation of people who hated Americans and it was thus patriotic to oppose the war. Yeah, that's right. Jerry Springer.

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Two Southern Senators [Washington Post: Editorial] It's a little late, but the mainstream media is finally picking up on the Lott-as-unrepentant-racist story. NPR covered it yesterday, CNN's acknowledged it, it's popping up in editorials...good. I need to find Gore's comments - they were great, coming as close to calling Lott a racist as you can without actually crossing that line...
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Genes Reveal Andamanese Origins. A new study unravels some of the mystery of the beginnings of the remote indigenous people of the Andaman Islands. Also: Scientists search for autism's causes.... Europe stands tough on genetically modified organisms.... All in this week's XY Files by Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News] Cool story on the Andamanese, one of the most isolated peopels on the planet. Give it a look.

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