So I missed wishing everybody a Happy first night of Chanukah, but commentor J. at J-Two-O gives me a chance to rectify my oversight… __ __ As an animist, and a progressive, I believe in celebrating every possible festival of lights. The Neopagan calendar’s four cross-quarter festivals are Imbolc (candles), Beltane (bonfires), Lammas (hearthfires) and …
Readership Capture
Readership capture writ large
I thought I’d do the reader blogs early today, before anyone dips into their Four Loko stockpile. Dolphin Kazoo wonders if the Greeks will become Godless communists like the Cubans. Emily Hauser reports back from the Holy Lands. Cheryl Rofer says meet the arsenic boss, same as the phosphorous boss. Libby Spencer is angry that …
Arsenic and outer space old lakes
Suck on this, carbon-based life forms: At its conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon will announce that NASA has found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and …
Arsenic and <strike>outer space</strike> old lakesPost + Comments (114)
Open thread
Please proceed from Hayekian principles.
Ain’t too proud to bleg
My therapist said to stop reading Bobo (she said he’s like a disease without any cure…don’t think you’re clever for saying the next line is true too btw), but I am now engaged in an epic battle to make my totebagger uncle stop taking him seriously. Beyond the classic Sasha Issenberg take down from the …
Artists in Our Midst: Holiday Shopping Edition
__ There are any number of gifted artists and crafters among the Balloon Juice readership. If you are one of them, this is the place to add a comment linking to your paintings, needlearts, sculpture, photography, music, cooking, house-building, graphic novel/comix, etc. website or contacts. If your highest art form is shopping, here’s your chance …
Artists in Our Midst: Holiday Shopping EditionPost + Comments (104)
My local paper
Our local newspaper is a Gannett paper and, as much as I worry about smaller newspapers disappearing, I won’t be that sorry to see it go: A local blogger summarizes: North Korea attacks the South … a tense run-up to Congress’s lame-duck session … a cliffhanger local Congressional election on the verge of resolution … …