Right Wing Nation

The arthritis in the hip has been acting up, but it’s actually now kind of incidental. For the last three months, I’ve had this pain behind my left shoulder blade (huh?), which has been getting worse. It’s too bad to ignore, so I’m going to the doctor this morning.
Tomorrow is a very full day. IT […]

Ann Althouse is posting mushroom pics, which brought to mind something I learned about Pennsylvania only after moving here: It’s the mushroom capital of the United States. You can even buy something called “mushroom compost” here (what it is, exactly, I’m not sure, since mushrooms are nearly all water and quickly turn into goo). In […]

From the Daily Mail. Here’s how we’d see the molecule represented in a textbook.

And here’s the world’s first picture of the molecule.

I haven’t laughed this hard in years. John Scalzi reams Star Trek “science” a new one.
UPDATE: Where’s PETA?

Ponder the st00pidity of this:
while teaching kids how to read is important, teaching kids to love to read is even more important.
Because, of course, it doesn’t matter if your kids are illiterate, as long as they love to read?

Shocker! CNN admits that Obama lied.

Here’s a big oops.
Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.
“If your investors are losing money in first-generation biofuels, I guarantee you they’ll […]

I’m teaching this semester, so blogging may be a bit spotty (definitely this and next week, since the semester just started).

France has won the world air guitar championship (hat tip to Tim Blair).

Comp’ny arrives at five.
Chips and guacamole
Crema de elote (corn soup)
Tamales with chicken and mole rojo
Carne con chile colorado
Arroz verde
Lime sherbet
Missing recipes provided, but not immediately (I’m busy). Aha! There’s the timer! Chiles are done soaking, more to do in the kitchen!

They’re baaaaaaaack!

I have for the last hour or so been scouring my blog looking for an excellent presentation on statistics by Peter Donnelly — although I couldn’t remember where it was or who gave the presentation. I’m assigning it in class this semester. Anyway, it’s for general audiences, and it’s technically about how statistics fool juries.
Here […]

I saw this on Photon Courier:
But parents are not simply shirking their own responsibility, they are encouraging kids not to take any. “There is a tutor culture [of] parents who don’t let their children fail once in a while. They’re scared it’ll look bad on their record,” says Caleb Rossiter, a professor at American University, […]

I’ve reworked this to make it a bit more readable (particularly to the non-math folks), and here and there, I’ve clarified or added material. I hope it helps. I’ve also added a section for those of you who use mostly written assessments, like papers or esssay questions (yes, you can use statistics to help […]

Bad Science has an excellent article up about how we are hardwired to find patterns:
But we have an innate human ability to make something out of nothing. We see shapes in the clouds and a man in the moon; gamblers are convinced that they have “runs of luck”; we can take a perfectly cheerful heavy […]

Sit around the fire and let me tell you a story — a true story, by the way — from an academic conference I attended some time ago. For those of you who have never attended an academic conference, it’s exactly as you imagine: Hundreds of egghead academics gathered together to present egghead academic papers […]

Technorati: junk science, moonbats, wackjobs, nutcases, progressives, leftists, liberals, envirowackos, democrats, idiotarians
Kind of a hat tip to WILLisms, and I say “kind of” because I’ve been a fan of the site since it first went up. But I hadn’t been in a while, so if you’ve […]

Via Jonah Goldberg, this uplifting saga:
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father’s arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.
On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over […]

Since these Swiss “scientists” have decided that “plant dignity” is a crucial issue, it’s time for a replay of this video from the Arrogant Worms, which at the time, was parody. Now, it’s “science,” and no doubt, we’ll soon be told that it’s “settled.” Then, we’ll have idiots in dreadlocks and birkenstocks firebombing farmers’ markets. […]

And one that will resonate with anyone who has been to college. Snobbery: The last refuge of the liberal-arts major.

If you’re not interested in the issues (yes, with political implications, at least in some cases) of academic research, you probably want to skip this. Just sayin, you know.
The field discussed here, Second Language Acquisition (SLA), is a split-personality field. It didn’t exist until Chomsky (yes, that Chomsky), so it is a field monopolized by […]

Those alien abduction statistics were taken from “Experiential America: A Bipartisan Study,”; by Dr. Lucinda Porpoise Wellsley-Meyer and Dr. Robert Griffin. The paper itself is fascinating. Being co-written by a moonbat and a sane human being lends the paper a schizophrenic quality, and it ultimately had to be separated into sections because the two researchers […]

The semester starts Monday — this coming Monday — and I’m killing myself trying to get ready. I will re-post a few articles for your enlightenment and entertainment in a few minutes.

I’m snowed under trying to get this class ready to go before the semester starts this coming Monday, but here are my recipe honors so far — check out my page on Group Recipes.
Kartoffelsuppe Potato Soup
Top 100 Rated
Top 100 In Main-course
Top 100 In General Cuisine
Wurst Mit Sauerkraut
Top 100 Rated
Top 100 […]

From the Washington Examiner.
Opposing the war was really about opposing George W. Bush. When Bush disappeared, so did their anti-war passion.

Taser parties!

Definitely the quotation du jour:
Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll. At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.
Hat tip: Insty

Look, I’ve got to get back into faculty mode. Anyway, today’s “well duh!” article. Yes, we’re back, and yes, there are pictures, but no, I haven’t yet uploaded any.

Here, finally. More later, probably tomorrow morning.

Leaving for Indiana tomorrow, coming back Sunday. May or may not blog.

Via Tim Blair comes this bit of news:
Authorities in Florida said a man charged with possessing of more than 1,000 images of child pornography on his computer blamed the downloads on his cat.
He must be an arteest.

Union thugs: Beat a nigra black man for Obama!

There are several of my grandmother’s recipes I’ve been hunting for quite some time now, and I finally found one of them in an old church cookbook from 1947 (the ad below scanned from the cookbook is for my great-grandfather’s feed store — note the phone number).

Fresh Apple Cake
Very moist, very yummy.
1 c. butter
2 c. […]

Cheap, easy, and really delicious — and fashionable with all the latte liberals! Okay, we’ll try to forget that last recommedation, because it’s really good and really easy. Yes, it’s cornmeal mush, or the Italian equivalent, polenta. And if you buy the expensive, pre-made polenta, you’re a moron (or you have money to throw away). […]

The (now, used to be SciFi) SyFy Channel will be broadcasting Lost from the first season, beginning with the pilot tonight (Thursday, technically) at 1:00 am (you may want to set your DVR to record five minutes or so after).

The indefatigable Tim Blair: Who among us has not written lesbian fiction in an elephant suit? And almost as ludicrous, from David Thompson, this gem of feminutty academese:
Informed by feminist investigations of embodiment and bodiliness, we ask: How do we understand our bodily relationship to other animals? How do we embody animals, and how do […]

My great-grandmother, grandmothers, and mother canned, of course (we had a basement full of chow-chow, jellies, and jams), but I inherited a not-so-rational fear of it. If you’re interested in trying your hand at it, check this out (hat tip to Instapundit).
One of these days, maybe.

I guess Arlen didn’t get trashed enough in Philly (the video is great, and follow the links). I got a postcard (haven’t seen anything about it online, so no link) saying he’ll be here in town for a town hall.
Wednesday August 12
8:30 am
President’s Hall 4 in the Penn Stater
215 Innovation Blvd
Mitch gets his wish! Get […]

Adapted from The Italian Cooking Encyclopedia, one of those oversized books I picked up on one of the perpetually on sale shelves at Barnes and Noble (check those out, by the way — there are often great cookbooks with great recipes there). This is not only easy and delicious, but it uses ingredients that are […]

More accurately, what they never tell you about ice cream.
First, what happens when you put cream in a mixer, turn it on, and let it go? That’s right. You get butter. Well, if you have an electric freezer, the same thing happens if your mix has too much butterfat: You can feel the butter on […]