SisterArtemis

Video and article about tool-use in octopi - the best part is seeing the little critter scamper on long on its little octopus tippy-toes.

From the page:
An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists. Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Good common sense run down of why the circular religious arguments for the exclusivity of marriage for heterosexual couples fall on their face in a legal setting. He doesn't claim that there's anything wrong with het marriage, just the the Christian arguments for it make no sense in terms of any legal arguments against gay marriage.

FROM THE PAGE:
.... Both parties have historically used the filibuster, but its overuse by modern Republicans stands at outrageous proportions. Not only has the number of filibusters increased dramatically -- from never more than seven a year in the 1960s to a record 137 in the last Congress -- so, too, has their banality.

For example, this month the Senate unanimously passed an extension of unemployment benefits. It took the breaking of three filibusters and five weeks of debate to pass the bill while, at the same time, 200,000 Americans lost their benefits. Even pettier is the GOP's repeated use of holds. Thomas Shannon, the president's nominee to be ambassador to Brazil, is a career Foreign Service officer and served in the Bush administration. But that has not stopped two Republican senators from holding up his nomination, for unknown reasons.

FROM THE PAGE:
How can your heart not break when you see people struggling so hard to undermine the President of the United States, and the best they can come up with is that he's not born in America, he's want to kill old people, he tells school children to study, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace, he's trying to help the U.S. host the Olympics, he's a socialist, he's a Nazi, he's a communist, he's like Hitler, he's a terrorist, he's a traitor. Their panicked faces during Saturday's House health care vote night was woeful. At a certain point, you just want to wrap your arms around them and say, "There, there, it's all right. Everything is going to be okay. Come to poppa."

From the page:
"Since the right won't accept colors other than black and white on their palette they are condemned to live in an alternative universe of absolutes in a world that demands nuance. "

FROM THE PAGE:
... What struck me was one caller, in particular, admitted his "disdain" for the gay community. An interesting word choice that raises a far more interesting question: can one have disdain for a people and still support their constitutional rights?

Good point about the schism in the Crisis Pregnancy Centers' ideology. They support any effort to guide women to carry to full term rather than abortion, and link those women with government-funded assistance so they can afford the care and health-care for those children. However, the same folks are resistant to tax payer money going to welfare and publicly funded health care, not to mention education about birth control beyond abstinence.

Informative and excellent interview with Rep. Barney Frank on the financial crisis and what led up to it, from Dec. 3, 2008.

This is a website supplement I found thru the timeline page for the Frontline episode, "The Warning," which is bookmarked as a Stumble Favorite on my stumble page, right below this entry.  It was originally posted as a supplement to their earlier episode, "Inside the Meltdown."

Excellent exploration of one of the underpinings of the 2008 financial crisis, the unregulated derivatives market. Going back a decade to the ignored warnings of Brooksley Born, then-head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Her warnings went ignored, and the exact crisis she predicted happened soon after; we only escaped national financial collapse because strong Wall Street firms were pressured to pool their resources and bail out the failing derivatives holdings.

The documentary closes, notably, with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's memorable admission that he had, for 40 years, read the financial markets wrong: they do not self-regulate.