Employee Free Choice Act

For those not in the know, (or those who happen to be multi-millionaire investment bankers living off the tax-payer's dime) there is legislation in the works that seeks to increase protections for us working poor. (Though I am unemployed right now... Coincidence?) The Employee Free Choice Act is designed to give employees more freedom to form unions.

The united we stand, divided we fall mentality is all important as we get crunched by our descending economy. The illusion that we've been living under is that "this is just how it goes." That lie has led corporations like AIG and CitiGroup all the way into our pockets. We must remember that all that money went somewhere when the stock market crashed. It just didn't find its way to us. It is a myth that we live in bad times. The fact is we've been robbed! As soon as we get tired of getting worked over, we might realize that there is more than enough prosperity to go around. It's time to demand more from our government. Namely, it has to work -- for everybody!

Unions and their collective bargaining agreements are designed to ensure the voice of the worker. Our concerns about affordable health care, fair wages and adequate working conditions are not minor gripes. We need to learn to expect them.

So, sign the petition and let's get the show on the road!

The Longest Family Tree in the World

A Bronze age cave dwelling in Germany contains the ancestor to two men living in the same village. Though they knew one another, they had no idea of their relation. Each man's family had been in the area since at least the 18th century but neither had any idea how long their tree actually was. Analysis of well preserved DNA from the 3,000 year-old bones revealed a distinctive pattern shared by both men.

Archaeologists from the area discovered the site at Lichtensteinhöhle cave in 1980 but the human remains weren't discovered by the team until 1993. Researchers from the University of Goettingen believe that the cave was occupied between 1,000 and 700 BCE. Remains of 23 people were found at the site, 14 males and 9 females. Archaeologists believe that the presence of cult items indicate that the location was both a living area and sacrificial burial site. They affirmed that calcium deposits, formed by dripping water passing through limestone in the cave walls, protected the remains. The preservation allowed scientists to extract DNA that revealed the 120 generation lineage.

Well, It's Out Now!

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has officially seen the light of day, at least as a screening for Scientific American staff. Here's the link to their story:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled&sc=WR_20080415

The few remarks from scientists who appeared in the film tell a big part of the story. Creationism and Intelligent Design, or whatever clothes they want to put on their Medieval thoughts, must resort to outright deception to elicit the responses from bona fide researchers that they require.

My original comments about the film can be found here:

http://gordian.blogspot.com/2007/12/ben-stein-shows-no-intelligence.html

The Palace of King David

This is a link to a Slate article that ran a few weeks ago. It's a good overview of the fallacious reasoning applied by biblical archaeologists or anyone looking really, really hard for something and finding it (whether it was there or not).

http://www.slate.com/id/2181864/entry/2181915/

The question to keep in mind here is: "of what exactly is this guy trying to find proof?"

Team Ukemi

This is a fabulous ukemi tutorial. These guys are great! It's tagged on YouTube as aikido but the Bujinkan emblem in the beginning tells all...

Here's a link to their website:

Team Ukemi

Zoontologies

Here are a couple of recent photoshop pieces that I did for a school project. They're all part of a class that intended to explore human perceptions of the animal world. All of these digital paintings/photo manipulations were done in Photoshop.

Zeitgeist :: The Movie

This is a documentary/investigative film produced by Peter Joseph. He begins by exploring the fraudulent and disasterous foundations of Christianity. With that deception as a foundation, he discusses the modern deceptions of September 11, 2001, and our modern monetary system.

Here is the embedded video at Google video:



More information is available, including a torrent download of the film and DVD purchase, at Zeitgeist The Movie.