Today on the Dish, I defended good-versus-evil narratives, Chris invited you to ask Tyler Cowen Anything and chuckled at a penguin, and Patrick gave you a moment of Andrew. Romney distinguished between Mormon "doctrine" and "practices," it appeared possible that the GOP might have to defend both in the election, and Gingrich reconciled (sort of) … Continue reading The Daily Wrap
Ellen Prager explains the camouflage methods of cephalopods (squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, etc) in Sex, Drugs, And Sea Slime: An intricate nervous system runs throughout a cephalopod’s epidermis, connecting its colored pigment organs and reflector cells to its relatively large brain and complex eyes. They are, in fact, the brainiest of all invertebrates, having the largest … Continue reading Nature’s Wall Flowers
It may get a vote as soon as tomorrow. Jim Burroway, who has been following the Ugandan legislation closely, has difficulty gauging the bill's chances of passing. Michelle Goldberg partially blames social conservatives in the US:
The point is not that American Christians urged their Ugandan counterparts to try to institute the death penalty for homosexuality—they didn’t. … Yet the ideology underlying the bill comes from American conservatives.
Noah Shachtman sees a "common thread emerging from WikiLeaks’ three major document dumps": These diplomatic dispatches, along with war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, detail a globe-spanning Cold War between Iran and the United States. Each side has its proxies, each side provides weapons to those allies, and each side uses the game of global … Continue reading Our Current Cold War
Today on the Dish we watched Viacom continue to scrub away any semblance of Muhammed from South Park. Bloggers rallied around Matt and Trey here, here, here, and here. A reader dissented. In response to Brooks' column, Andrew composed a thorough defense of conservatism and Obama. Reader feedback here. Johann Hari assessed the latest British … Continue reading The Weekly Wrap
Today on the Dish, the president got heckled for the delay on DADT. Over in the UK, polling continued to plague the Tories and we continued to shine a spotlight on Clegg here, here, and here. Andrew elucidated more on class warfare and Douthat worried about the implications of the election on the American right. … Continue reading The Daily Wrap
A reader writes:
I saw your updated story from the man who posted the original photo from his office window in Santiago, Chile last Friday. Also, ironically, that day–right before the earthquake–I reposted this View From Your Window on my Facebook page in honor of my son, Adam, and daughter-in-law, Paola, who were in Chile on vacation. My daughter-in-law, who is originally from Chile, was with her sisters, nephew, and mother at her sister's house in Santiago when the quake hit. My son and his brother-in-law were on Robinson Crusoe Island that day.
(Hat tip: BF)
by Chris Bodenner
After watching this video we posted of coconut-carrying octopuses, a reader points to an interesting article that Slate published last year:
YouTube is loaded with evidence of what some might call octopus intelligence. One does an uncanny impression of a flounder. Another mimics coral before darting away from a pushy camera. A third slips its arms around a jar, unscrews it, and dines on the crab inside. Scientific journals publish research papers on octopus learning, octopus personality, octopus memory. Now the octopus has even made it into the pages of the journal Consciousness and Cognition (along with its fellow cephalopods the squid and the cuttlefish). The title: "Cephalopod consciousness: behavioral evidence."
Today on the Dish we saw DC formally embrace marriage equality, marijuana appeared to surpass tobacco use among the youth, Hizballah rebranded itself, and things looked grim for Americans detained in Iran. Regarding news that detainees are headed to Illinois, a reader from that state got tough and Jennifer Rubin got petty. Hannity, meanwhile, got … Continue reading The Daily Wrap
