I know that humans are the pinnacle of intellectual life on Planet Earth (well, unless you believe Douglas Adams, anyway). But there are some awfully smart animals out there, too. Today’s SVR, which pays tribute to our furry and feathery fellow travelers, begins with the Shaun White of the animal kingdom.
Read moreI suspect very few of us Coloradans will ever forget the day, a few years back, when our nitwit former governor posed before the cameras and pronounced that “today, the entire state of Colorado is on fire.”
Read moreIn case you missed it, today is Vernal Equinox 2012. From everybody here at S&R, may your day and your night be of approximately equal duration… 🙂 Photograph: Stonehenge Aotearoa, New Zealand. Click image for more.
Read moreEarlier this morning Chris offered up a post entitled “Why are environmentalists missing a mild-weather opportunity?” It raises a pragmatic point about how the climate “debate” plays out in the public sphere and is well worth a read. Go ahead – I’ll wait. Predictably – and by “predictably,” I mean that last night I e-mailed our climate guru, Brian Angliss,
Read moreLast week, in part one of our series on Denver photographer Greg Thow, we saw some fantastic shots of the 5280, one of America’s most beautiful cities. Of course, stunning nature photography is a prerequisite for shutterbugs living in Colorado, and while it was his urban photos that first caught my attention, Thow has an eye for the Centennial State’s trees,
Read moreThe more I watch modern politics (and economics and the culture wars and science “debates”) the more it all reminds me of pro wrestling. You know how it goes. Tough match, back and forth, both the good guy (the “face”) and the bad guy (the “heel”) getting their licks in, and then at the decisive moment either the heel “accidentally”
Read moreCase 1: In 1997 a prominent scientist made a bet with a colleague over a complex black hole issue that physicists were trying to figure out. This bet was very public and given the egos involved in the field of advanced quantum science, the stakes were huge. Case 2: In a climate-related thread on S&R, a “skeptic” was asked point-blank: “What
Read moreYesterday, on Facebook, one of my friends posted a graphic of the president and this recent quote, which is making the rounds: I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare… And today, over at the Great Orange Satan, msblucow has an interesting poll
Read moreI’ve been thinking about how modern society explains various phenomena, everything from simple everyday questions to the grand complexities that vex the lay thinker’s ability to make sense of a confusing world. More and more, it’s become clear that we’re relying on Fuckem’s Razor, the little-known Medieval principle of implausibility. I’d like to take a moment to explain this theory
Read moreOkay, this is brilliant. I never heard of it until this morning and now I learn that there’s apparently a whole movement afoot, with a project and everything.
Read moreUPDATE: Top ten storm videos from al.com this morning. There’s not much you can say, really, except perhaps to observe that Clay Hasenfuss, the guy who shot the video at the mall, is certifiably insane. You’ll see what I mean. The death toll is climbing toward 200. S&R’s thoughts are with all the communities affected by yesterday’s storms. _____ Video
Read moreI suppose, as a general rule, the human animal is built to prefer knowing to not knowing, but I have been struck over the course of the past decade or so at how much worse our society has gotten at tolerating uncertainty. It’s as if having to say “I don’t know” triggers some kind of DNA-level existential crisis that the
Read more1638 was a busy year.
Read moreIf you’ve spent any amount of time walking dogs, you may have noticed that for squirrels, it isn’t enough to be up a tree. They need to be up their tree. And so, this particular squirrel had a problem.
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lullaby pit 