Havin' trouble with that camouflage?

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Researchers scouring swamps in the heart of Borneo island have discovered a venomous species of snake that can change its skin color, the conservation group WWF announced Tuesday.

The ability to change skin color is known in some reptiles, such as the chameleon, but scientists have seen it rarely with snakes and have not yet understood this phenomenon, the group said in a statement.

"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket," said Mark Auliya, a reptile expert and a consultant for the group. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white."

Reptiles typically change color to camouflage themselves from predators.

This is the modern world

"We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times," she said. "We're not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important."

I totally agree with this article, but I'm also old and set in my traditional, untechnological ways. Are people obsessed with Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook tapping into some wellspring of good feeling and friendship over broadband cables that I cannot possibly fathom? I doubt it! I guess it's better than turning to hard drugs, or joining a cult.

So that's the way Alito blows

On the docket yesterday--to what extent do corporations have the right to retaliate against employees who file discrimination claims? Short of firing, of course--we all know you can't do that.

But in an 8-1 decision, Alito was the only justice who suggested that businesses could retain the right to take lesser retaliatory action (suspension pending investigation, job transfers, etc) in response. Can't speak to the details of the case, but it's interesting...looks like the left was right about this guy (any puns you can find in there intended)

Rove has a big fat backside

With the summer around the corner it is hard to keep up with all the political stuff going on, but by chance this morning I heard Murtha on meet the press go after Rove for some comments he made at a speech in New Hampshire. Everytime I hear this guy I like him eve more. He is an another link to Murtha defending himself recently on House floor.

we've got the 5th ranked soccer team in the world?!?!?

Is anybody aware of this? How and when did that happen? The freakin' United States SOCCER (not football) team is ranked above sometime global monsters like Argentina and Italy?

Wow. If we win this thing--or make it to the semi-finals even, will anybody pay attention? Maybe. Apparently our World Cup hosting foray 10 years ago did some good.

I'll be on an airplane tomorrow, but I think I'm going to watch this US-Czech Rep. game....

Dance, falcon, dance!

I found this on a discussion board for a band called Splashdown. I believe they're referring to you, Sr. falcon.

"> splashdown to ben lee, it was a great idea. it was similar to last night
> with the gifted children who played accoustic emo (but they are usually
> electric) then electronic and loud splashdown...perfect contrast.

Not to mention the front man for the Gifted Children's dancing. That was
fantastic. I got it on tape and am practicing the moves for my next
show.

I'll have to break out the Converse All Stars."

From around Sep. 10, '99. Have you trademarked your dance-moves?

The youth of America

After the Spelling bee champion was crowned....Primetime aired a foster kid special...one minute you are look at arguably the least neglected kids in america to the most neglected...the juxtaposition made the foster kids story that much more depressing...I don't know if ABC planned it...

Stupid intervention tactics and your tax dollars

Just a little rant before starting "work".

Ok, we have a situation where a few of our "best and brightest" went and massacred about 2 dozen people in Iraq. This is a bad thing, and I'm not going to even scratch the surface of all the socio-politico-militaro-religio-etc implications of it.

What gets me, though, is that our answer to this seems to be to send whe whole military to anger-management training. Or ethics training--whatever--probably the same kind of "training" that corporate f**kheads hire consultants for--to make a lot of noise about addressing problems that they don't believe exist, and that they sure as hell won't take responsibility for.

Whether or not 500,000 troops watch a play-acted video featuring a bunch of nice soldiers playing hackeysack with Iraqi kids is really not going to make much of a difference.

It drives me nuts, though--our culture is awash in this shit. Run over a dog, take a week-long driver rehabilitation class. Beat your wife, take a month of group therapy and fill out a form saying you won't beat anyone else for a year. Terrorists strike on your home soil, stick up a rainbow alert system and hawk duct tape at 15 times the cost. Run out of oil, tear up half the Alaskan frontier in the hopes of keeping our SUV culture alive for another 2 months.

That's one thing I hate about this country--these abominably superficial reactions to monumental problems. Reactions that not only don't fix anything, but completely insult the intelligence of the few intelligent citizens out there while scoring political windfalls with the morons (everybody else). No one--NO ONE--tries to get at the root of problems. It's even a problem in our educational system--no one learns concepts anymore--only answers. We can't leave our children behind, can we???

argh....