"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Doctor Science
Since my last post here about Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam’s A Billion Wicked Thoughts we’ve had more Fun Times together. Some of the ensuing discussions have been very helpful for me in clarifying things I "just know", and in spotting the problems with some of other people’s conventional wisdom: for instance, that men are "sexually more visual" than women.
by liberal japonicus
I started playing table tennis slightly more seriously than usual about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine who did Chinese as an undergrad and played a lot both while living in Guangdong and when he came back, was looking for a partner to take lessons with him and asked me. I said sure, why not.
More below the fold, but just jump into the comments if you have something else to talk about.
by Doctor Science
It’s going to be another very, very bad weather day in the Midwest:
From the National Weather Service.
Specifically:
From Weather.com; more details there.
If you are in the zone, please make sure you are never more than 15 minutes from a solid, preferably underground tornado shelter this afternoon. Monitor local TV/radio closely! And when the sky gets that sickly greenish color, you know what to do. I did part of my growing-up in Champaign-Urbana, IL, and I’ve never forgotten what tornado weather looks like.
by Doctor Science
So, it’s Rapture Weekend! As Fred Clark says at slactivist, it’s not altogether all that funny — the people who really believe are truly suffering, and worse is to come. The formula is clear: half will despair, and half will double down.
A lot of people are posting links to their favorite “end of the world” songs today, and here’s my nominee:
at YouTube
By chagrined, using audio from Great Big Sea’s version of “It’s the End of the World”, video from “Life After People”. Even if all us humans disappear tomorrow, there’s plenty of life to go on.
If you don’t believe the Rapture will happen real soon now, it behooves you to listen to Real Climate Scientists warning that “Earth, unlike Alien, has no sequel”:
by liberal japonicus
The video takes a little long to get to the point, but I think is worth the wait. Hope to say the same for what I have written, below the fold
by Gary Farber
The Fourth Amendment continues to be onion-peeled into nothingness. KENTUCKY v. KING puts another nail in the coffin as police gain the right to kick in your door simply because they hear movement within your dwelling.
Obviously that's probable cause, because noise indicates a crime.
Does that make sense to you? It does to 8 out of 9 members of the Supreme Court.
ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. GINSBURG, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
Here's the gist:
[…]
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said police officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches by kicking down a door after the occupants of an apartment react to hearing that officers are there by seeming to destroy evidence.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the majority had handed the police an important new tool.
“The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases,” Justice Ginsburg wrote. “In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”
The case, Kentucky v. King, No. 09-1272, arose from a mistake. After seeing a drug deal in a parking lot, police officers in Lexington, Ky., rushed into an apartment complex looking for a suspect who had sold cocaine to an informant.
But the smell of burning marijuana led them to the wrong apartment. After knocking and announcing themselves, they heard sounds from inside the apartment that they said made them fear that evidence was being destroyed. They kicked the door in and found marijuana and cocaine but not the original suspect, who was in a different apartment.
The Kentucky Supreme Court suppressed the evidence, saying that any risk of drugs being destroyed was the result of the decision by the police to knock and announce themselves rather than obtain a warrant.
The United States Supreme Court reversed that decision on Monday, saying the police had acted lawfully and that was all that mattered. The defendant, Hollis D. King, had choices other than destroying evidence, Justice Alito wrote.
He could have chosen not to respond to the knocking in any fashion, Justice Alito wrote. Or he could have come to the door and declined to let the officers enter without a warrant.
“Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame,” Justice Alito wrote.
Right. Let's get more detail.
by Doctor Science
In which I follow up some of the discussion in the comments to The Women Men Don’t See, for once disagree with Fred Clark (slacktivist), and talk about sluts and the walk of not-shame.
Cause it is Friday here.
by Doctor Science
As you may have heard, last week a Brooklyn Chasidic Jewish newspaper, Der Tzeitung, printed the iconic “Situation Room” photo with the women carefully Photoshopped out:
by Doctor Science
In my earlier post about the ‘obesity epidemic’ I talked about Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham. This book really changed my thinking about a number of aspects of food, cooking, and human evolution, but the very best part about it is what Wrangham says about BCBs.
BCBs, as every reader of Terry Pratchett knows, are Burnt Crunchy Bits.