Dowbrigade

Just sent Dave the blurb for the Beginners Sessions at BloggerCon.  It’s
starting to look like I will be leading all three sessions, which I don’t
mind except it means I will miss what I am sure will be fantastic sessions
by Joi
Ito, Eugene
Volokh, Halley
Suitt and others. But all calls to service involve sacrifice.

Remember, Day
2 of BloggerCon is FREE, so any readers I may have out
there (my readers are no longer completely theoretical! Last night at
the Berkman Blogger meeting Ryan Overbey came
up and said he enjoyed reading Dowbrigade! The first time someone I didn’t
personally tell about
the blog actually confessed to reading it!) who can, please stop by and
say "Hi!".

Beginners Session: Blogging 101

When: October 5 , 9:00AM, 11:00AM and 1:30 PM

Where: Pound 203

Presenter: Michael Feldman of Dowbrigade

Who Attends: Newbies, people who have recently started blogs, people
who have been trying to start a blog, people who are thinking about starting
a blog and people who are just interested in finding out what all the
excitement is all about.

Description: A general orientation to the blogging phenomena will be
followed by a step-by-step tutorial on how to start a blog at Berkman
or elsewhere, the basics of how to compose, post and edit a
blog entry, how to post pictures, and how to manage a blog. Questions
and
discussion
will follow.

We’re starting
to see these damn things everywhere.  What at first seemed either
a sick joke or a classic American shill has been turning into a nightmare
on
the
sidewalks
of America. 

Since I saw my first Segway from the window of a $10
Super Wei Hung Chinatown direct bus as it pulled into Manhattan,
they have been proliferating like the mushrooms in my roommate’s closet.
Last week I saw a whole family of them, Ma and Pa in their normal-sized
Segways, and Junior and Sissy on cute little scaled-down models, tooling
around Cambridge near the Harvard campus. I’m pretty sure they were speaking
a foreign language.

This has to stop.  These things are taking over out sidewalks, making
them unsafe for skateboarders, roller bladers and bicycle messengers.  They
are hated by panhandlers, feared by little old ladies and viciously resented
and chased by dogs. I would imagine they are decimating a squirrel population
at this time of year out for nothing more than
an easy
nut
on
a mild autumn day.

Now, the latest bombshell form Segway – they are unsafe! Who knew!  Seems
the company is recalling thousands of the evil little platforms because when
the batteries run low they throw their riders to the pavement, resulting
in a number of serious injuries.

from the New York Times

WASILLA, Alaska – A hunter attacked by a grizzly bear
on a remote trail said he used duct tape to bind his bite wounds, then
rode an all-terrain vehicle to his pickup truck and drove himself to
a hospital.
 

Bill Murphy said the Sept. 17 attack happened after he surprised a grizzly
cub and its mother on a trail about 50 miles northeast of Anchorage where
he was hunting for moose and sheep.

"I just lay perfectly still and
said, ‘God, don’t bite my head,’" Murphy said. He wrapped duct tape
around his shoulder and cut up a cloth bag to wrap around his thigh.
He hiked out to his four-wheeler, rode
about 15 miles back to his pickup truck and drove a half hour to Valley
Hospital
in Palmer.

from
the Associated Press.

Quelles,
ceci sont des nouvelles? Que les grenouilles syphilitiques desuccion
slithering dehors de dessous leur roche au badmouth les mêmes Américains
qui ont tiré leurs châtaignes hors du feu DEUX FOIS pendant
le siècle passé. Pourquoi ceux jaded les imbeciles devraient
groveling aux pieds d’oncle Sam priant la rémission plutôt
que de battre autour avec leur tête collective vers le haut de
leur âne français de fantaisie, feignant pour être
offensé par héroisme d’American et action en retard. Vous êtes
prochain, Pierre!

Ce qui font le Frenceh savez jouer aux cartes de toute façon.
Quand était la dernière fois un Français a gagné la
série du monde de tisonnier. Ils ne peuvent pas même gagner
l’excursion De leur propre pays!

du
CNN

I fell for this one 30 years ago, when it was called "The Biological Basis of
Human Sexuality." We knew they wouldn’t be showing stag films
in a Harvard biology course, unless they were about the horned rather
than the horny variety.  However, by the third week we would have
been happy with stags, or any mammals for that matter. It turned
out the biological basis of the title rarely involved creatures more
complex than insects, and was largely confinded to microscopic multicelled
organisms and how they procreate. The professor seemed to take a malicious
delight in our obvious disappointment and piled on the zygotes and mitochondriae.
Classic bait and switch.

It looks like this year’s version hasn’t changed much, although it seems to have a little more truth in advertising, and a blog.
  Or maybe professors these days are just a little slicker with the
old B & S.  Anyway here are some teasers from the class Blog
for Biology H95 fi:

Are you curious about penis-fencing flatworms . . . voracious
female spiders who
demand
their
mates offer
themselves
as
a
nuptial meal
. .
. sneaker male fish who gain a reproductive advantage by virtue of
stealth and oversized testes . . . chaining behaviors in hermaphroditic
sea slugs
. . . male birds who are virtually flightless by virtue of their
sexual ornaments . . . female fruit flies who have evolved defenses to
counteract
the toxic seminal fluids their mates provide? Then maybe you’ve been
looking for Biology 95hfi: Sex: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
About It and Then Some

from the Sex Tutorial Weblog