PermagrinGirl, whom I just found by way of Clayton Cramer, gets off a zinger:
I’m still wondering, though, if it’s always ‘blackface’ to dress up as a black person, even if you’re costumed as an actual person (like Venus Williams), does this mean that we have to institute racial segregation in Halloween costumes? [ . . . ] I thought people who counseled you to ‘stick to your own kind’ were considered racist.
Dad rang from Raleigh this evening to report that he is among half a million who found themselves in the dark after an ice-storm. He says the cats seem most disturbed by the quiet: no television, no whirring computers, no humming fridge . . . .
Best wishes to those of you who can’t read this just now.
A correspondent asks:
Anyone else starting to wonder if the IAO isn’t a sacrificial Day-Glo “rabbit” intended to draw eyes away from the real danger buried somewhere in, say, the Department of Agriculture?
Vicki Rosenzweig, one of those who first got me thinking about starting a weblog, relays a couple of science treats:
Fresh evidence of ‘eclipse wind’.
Chaotic orbits of shepherd moons. (The rotation of Hyperion was already known to be chaotic, but Pandora and Prometheus are the first bodies seen to have chaotic revolution.)
James Grimmelmann opines:
So if they catch the [Potomac] sniper – and we all hope that “if” is really a “when” – I would find it harder to make the claim that he should live than to make such a claim on behalf of an African-American teen convicted by an all-white jury on the testimony of unreliable police informant for a convenience-store robbery gone wrong. Much harder.
Written on October 22.
Vampire Population Ecology (pdf).
2006: New improved link.
Blind? Can’t stand dogs? Get a mini horse. (Found at B3TA, to which in turn I was referred by Bruce Baugh.)