Unless you're African, some of your ancestors were Neanderthals. Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans. This goes a long way in explaining complaints I've heard from women over the years about men they've dated. It also suggests that GEICO needs to re-vist its ad campaign.

The Interesting World of Misspelling

I tend to misspell the url address of this blog by not hitting the S. As a result every time I am treated to the interesting and delightful world of harv8.blogpot.com. I seem to be missing the S more and more often.

Update-
After a year and a half after discovering the site was updated today after my post (must have been because of my post), the original site is now biblestudies.org. (Just in case you still need a doomsday clock or as the website states, "If YOU have ANY concern about your future on earth + eternity, it is critical you read this page.")

News Wrangle for the day after Cinco de Mayo

Stories about 'bad people doing good' or 'good people doing bad' are interesting to me. See Penn Hills doctor gets jail time for fraud.

What is wrong with this picture?

Is is a good thing that these people are paying our property taxes?

Plus, they could start paying more of our taxes, if we tax soft drinks (which, I admit, seems, at first blush, a great idea).

Lastly, any thoughts on this:

untethered from reality

It all started with Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, hardly an advocate for the left. In the first of several posts, he reflects on David Frum’s recent ouster from the American Enterprise Institute, and the less formal excommunication of Andrew Sullivan from the conservative movement. See "Frum, Cocktail Parties, and the Threat of Doubt." Some of this strict enforcement of orthodoxy, Sanchez concedes, is simply people following the money. But he's also worried about a trend, as he sees it, in the conservative movement toward "epistemic closure." He compares conservatism's intolerance of dissent to China's efforts to censor the internet. Nothing can be allowed to challenge its closed world.

Sanchez then elaborates on his theme with "Epistemic Closure, Technology, and the End of Distance." Here, he suggests that, while group think and confirmation bias are present among every clique to some degree, today these phenomena are not left-and-right symmetrical, although it's easy enough to point out this sort of thing on the left. Sanchez goes on to blame the conservative circling of the wagons on the collapse of geographic closure. To use his example, it's no longer possible to live in a geographically contained world where a ban against gay couples attending a prom -- so self-evidently justified to the local community -- will go unchallenged from the wider world.

Finally, Sanchez posts "A Coda on Closure" wherein he explains what he meant by "epistemic closure," after confessing that it really wasn't the right phrase anyway. It's not so much that the right is incapable of new ideas, that it's advocates are particularly closed-minded, or that they are not aware of other points of view. What he meant is that the conservative analysis is more and more impervious to actual facts -- in his words, the right has "become worryingly untethered from reality."

His quick review of the crazy yet unshakable beliefs from the right: "the obsession with ACORN or the idea that the “Climategate” e-mails were some kind of game changer in the larger AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming] debate." And again: "Bill Ayers’ potential authorship of Obama’s memoir, the looming threat of death panels, the president’s crypto-Islamic background and allegiances, his attempt to create a “private army” via the health care bill, his desire to see America come to ruin, the imagined racism of Sonia Sotomayor." No need to even mention the birther people. And now, just hot off the press, we have Fox news, former Bush officials and Rush Limbaugh making veiled accusations of sabotage of the BP oil rig -- maybe by the administration.

Since then, the web has come alive with various responses from all sides. One chronicle of the debate is here: " 'Epistemic Closure'? Those Are Fighting Words." Even my people, the philosophers, weigh in claiming that Sanchez misused a technical philosophical term. See "More From the Frontlines of the Epistemic Closure Debate." (John Quiggin, an economist at the University of Queensland in Australia, suggested, instead, the use of the word “agnotology," coined by the historian Robert Proctor “to describe study of the manufacture of ignorance. ”)

Finally, where I came in: Marc Ambinder's post in the Atlantic website "Have Conservatives Gone Mad?" Ambinder argues that, if you want to read genuinely cogent criticism of this administration, look leftward. The Republican base has abandoned all pretense at serious analysis and, instead, "seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking." And by the way, it seems clear that Ambinder means to answer his title question in the affirmative.

Forget the Steelers or Penguins - Pittsburgh is most livable

Pittsburgh- Most Livable City

The Next Generation

Click on the the Slideshow for the still gallery-

Colbert-Boobquakes are Real

Colbert: Boobquake Day Causes Earthquake
- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.

New evidence suggests indecently dressed women may not cause earthquakes

Granted God works in mysterious ways, but what can we learn from Boobquake?

Heath Miller, the second coming?

We all know that Heath Miller can practically walk on water on the football field and is the humblest Steeler, probably the humblest NFL'er. But now comes another sign that pretty much confirms he is the Chosen One. While 110% of other athletes on their day off hit the local links, Heath does this.

Bravo! Canadiens

I'm not sure what the talk is around Pittsburgh, but from my lonely Harrisburg outpost, it seemed to me that the Pens were a solid enough team this year with playoff potential -- except for one problem: they couldn't beat the Capitals or the Devils. Now that the Flyers and the Canadiens have done all the heavy lifting for us, what do the stars say about a Stanley Cup repeat?

Halak lifts Canadiens past Capitals 2-1 in Game 7

Superhero Fashions

For all those fans of Project Runway -- Ellen this means you -- here is, as Glen Walden says, Tim Gunn at his Tim Gunniest. What can I say? This is inspired:

Tim Gunn vs. Superhero Costumes

News Roundup (or is that Wrangle)

A few curious news stories surfaced today.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ran an article entitled Crisis management professionals not impressed by Ben's approach. Basically, the owners and principle partners of companies which will improve your image for a fee are saying that whoever Ben Roethlisberger got to write his apology didn't do a good job. In other woods, if he had hired their firm, they could have made Ben sound much, much more sincere. This article is so crazy that its hard to have just one favorite part, but I like:

"It really means nothing," said Mike Paul, who heads MGP & Associates in New York (slogan: "Because Your Reputation is Everything").

I guess the subtext of the slogan is "and what you actually do means nothing"

Just as crazy in a different way was this article on Arizona's new immigration law, Mexico's Felipe Calderon says Arizona laws breed intolerance and hate. In this case the article seems to actually be reporting news, but it reveals the extraordinary lengths people, even smart people, will go to...well...to be liked by others, I guess. Toward the end of the article John McCain is mentioned as having an awkward time with the bill.

He added that he opposed "discriminatory behaviour" by the police armed with their new powers and that, in conversation with police chiefs at the weekend, he had been assured they could implement it without racial profiling.

So, in other words, the police will be looking for western Europeans who legally emigrated to Mexico, but then illegally emigrated to Arizona?

Regaining Respectability

Let's say you have a tarnished image that needs to be re-built. How do you do it? Well, if you are smart like the Steelers, you go to Virginia Tech, Alexandra's alma mater, where three out of 17 Steeler rookies received their training.

NYT Math Series

Chances Are, this week's installment of the NYT math series, explains Peter's cancer statistics baffler, as well as offering an interesting insight in the O.J. Simpson trial.

Fat and stupid

The phrase “fat and stupid” seems to roll off the tongue so naturally. Well, there’s a reason for that. According to Olivia Judson, quite possibly the hottest evolutionary biologist on the planet (see photo), being fat makes you stupid. Her article tells you why. See "Brain Damage." She also warns that our alarmingly high rates of obesity may well lead to a dramatic rise in dementia.

Mycroft Holmes may be Sherlock’s intellectual superior for now. But if Mycroft does nothing to change his ways and continues to lounge around the Diogenes Club all day, he’ll no doubt be a candidate for early onset dementia, while the lean Sherlock will still be solving the most enigmatic of crimes into his 70, 80’s, and beyond (that is, if his cocaine habit doesn't fry his brain first).

The Insanity of Endurance

I had written this earlier in the Competitive Recreational Jogging post, "I have always contended that a psychiatric test would be a far better predictor of running ability than a physical. The degree of insanity corresponding with a runner's ability". Here's proof, this ultra endurance athlete literally goes insane to be the best in the World.

"When the mujahedeen appeared in 2004, Stanovnik (Robic's support team) pretended to see them too, and urged Robic to ride faster."

Cavalcade of Incompetence

To start your Friday morning off right, infomercial incompetence-

Pirates set new record

Another milestone was surpassed today as the Pirates broke their 100 year old record for worst shut out in club history. The old record was losing 18-0 in 1910. The blew past that with a 20-0 loss. In the Pirates 8 losses this year they have been out scored 85 to 13. There are rumors that the Post Gazette writer who listed starting pitching as a plus this year has been transferred to Home & Garden.

By the way, this is a good place to point out that the mercy rule was used in Major League Baseball for the first time in the record breaking (for the D-backs) 13 run inning. With two outs, but walks and hits still coming in rapid succession, the pirate pitcher managed to get 2 strikes on the batter. The next pitch was no where near the strike zone but catchable by Doumit, so the umpire, who had a late dinner engagement, called strike three, much to the shock of the Arizona fans but the relief of the Pirates.

On top of everything else, women now to blame for earthquakes

Carole King sang that "I feel the earth move under my feet" whenever her truelove is around. Now, an Iranian cleric suggests that women behaving promiscuously are also causing the earth to shake. "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," says Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric. See Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric.

We have seen this same causation confusion in our own country. Jerry Falwell claimed that the ACLU, pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians brought on the attack of 9/11. And then Pat Robertson claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for abortion and later said that the earthquake in Haiti occurred because Haitians a long time ago made a pact with the devil to help them throw off the yoke of the French.

This all underscores a theme Karen Armstrong likes to return to: that fundamentalists of any stripe have more in common with each other than they have with the more reflective members of their own faith. I'm sure that if Robertson and Hojatoleslam ever got together, they would end up nodding a lot in agreement with each other.

Krugman Invokes the Dark Ages

I like "Blankfine" but I'm sure we can come up with some better terms

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/a-terminological-suggestion/