The GOP especially hates facts when they get out to the public, as this grad student found out:

During tedious days of counting tiny Douglas fir seedlings on blackened slopes west of here, Daniel Donato never imagined his work would put him in the crosshairs of Congress. He was just studying how forests grow back after a fire.

But after his research appeared in the online version of the journal Science in January, the Oregon State University graduate student began to feel like a lightning rod. A federal agency briefly yanked funding for his project, irate politicians and timber interests e-mailed Donato's dean to complain, congressmen grilled him, and professors at his own university tried unsuccessfully to keep the paper from being published in the print edition of Science.

His principal finding — that post-fire logging hindered forest regrowth — was hardly revolutionary. But the study, with Donato as lead author, was published just as Congress was considering legislation to make it easier for timber companies to undertake salvage logging of dead trees after fires on federal land. That bill, backed by the Bush administration and recently passed by the House, is based on an underlying assumption that burned forests recover more quickly if they are logged and then replanted.

Donato's results provided ammunition to the bill's opponents — and more broadly to environmentalists fighting salvage logging, which makes up roughly a third of the timber sales from national forests across the country. They argue that dead trees provide not only wildlife habitat, but the nourishment for a new forest that will ultimately provide a richer, more diverse ecosystem. That is anathema to timber advocates, who see dead wood left to rot unharvested as not only counterproductive but a waste of resources.

There's lots more at the link, and it's well worth reading.

The GOP: in service to Big Business, fighting science all the way—and willing to sink to any depth.

Go has fascinated people for at least 4,000 years. It owes its longevity to the way it combines simplicity and complexity: simple rules, from which emerge complexity of play. The game originated in China, and the countries where it is most played today are China, Korea, and Japan.

It was on its way to becoming a game for old folks in Japan, until Hikaru No Go came along: a series of mangas, which led to a series of anime. (Both manga and DVD are available from Amazon.com.) In the English-language versions, we’re currently on tenterhooks awaiting volume 7 (manga) and volume 3 (DVD).

For more information on Hikaru No Go, look at the article in Sensei’s Library (a wiki devoted to Go). I have enjoyed the mangas, but the anime are too choppy for me. OTOH, the Older Grandson read that first manga and was immediately hooked on Go (the photo shows him playing Go against his mum, The Eldest). And he likes the anime series, too. He’s 9—a good age to be learning Go.

The games in Hikaru No Go are from actual professional play. You can find all the games here as .SGF (Smart Game Format) files. To play them, download the (free) program CGoban 2 (which also allows you to play Go on the (free) Kiseido Go Server).

For more information about Go, see this article in the Wikipedia, or devote some time to exploring Sensei’s Library.

And, speaking of steak, let me draw your attention to this wonderful article, which begins:

The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don’t forget to drink water). Read the rest of this entry »

What a great drummer! Here, watch this video of an incredible drum solo. Note when Jo Jones puts down the sticks and uses his hands and fingers. Truly a great. You may indeed want to take them up on their offer to download the video to your computer.