Friday, September 21, 2007

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Or at least, be kind of...sobered and solemn.

James Carroll says, "The religious tradition of Christian fundamentalism is one thing; the tradition of American exceptionalism another. They both have their roots in the same experience. They were separated. Under George Bush they’ve been brought together."

Read the whole interview here.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Alex the African Grey passes on

Just 31 when he died suddenly this past weekend, Alex the African Grey parrot taught everyone just how blindingly smart his people are. I'm sure his person, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, and her staff and students are devastated.

"Alex was in good health at his most recent annual physical about two weeks ago," says blogger GrrlScientist. "According to the vet who conducted his necropsy, there was no obvious cause of death."

Of Alex GrrlScientist also reports, "As early as 1999, he was able to "identify 50 different objects and understand quantities up to 6; he could distinguish 7 colors and 5 shapes, and understand the concepts of 'bigger', 'smaller', 'same', and 'different', and he was learning 'over' and 'under'," according to the New York Times. By 2002, Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words."

Gifts in his memory may be made to:

The Alex Foundation
c/o Dr. Irene Pepperberg
Department of Psychology/MS-062
415 South Street
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA 02454
781-736-2195
alex@alexfoundation.org

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Don't reply to my Quechup invite

It's not that I don't wanna be your friend.

But if you got a Quechup invite from me, it was unintentional.

I signed up because I got an invite of my own (unintentional, I now realize) from somebody who didn't know Quechup would automatically email everybody in her address book when she searched for contacts.

I've since deleted my account.

Read more about this insidious social networking site here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/04/quechup-is-rotten-do.html

and here:

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2007/09/spam_alert_just_say_no_to_quechup_1.html

Apologies to everyone who may have gotten such a spam invite purporting to be from me!