Tiding you over

Sorry for my silence of the last few days. I've been very sick and am only partly recovered - and, as is all too often the case, there were other things that had prior claim on my diminished physical resources.

But here's the deal: I've decided to go to a guaranteed-twice-a-week format. I intend that starting next Monday, that every Monday and Thursday I'll have a for lack of a better term "major" post with posting on other days as events and/or the spirit moves me. I imagine a lot of those will be "minor" posts, but perhaps something with more substance will slip in.

Note that I do almost all of my posting late at night (or overnight), so a Monday/Thursday posting schedule means a Tuesday/Friday reading schedule. So kinda figure me like a twice-a-week columnist in your newspaper. (You remember those.)

I'm quite sure that there will be posts up here between now and Monday, so do check back. But for the moment, here are a few bits and pieces to keep you entertained:

- Hugh has a long and growing list of Bush administration scandals. A number of them are examples of scandalous policies rather than legal scandals, but in the list of 298 (as of this writing) there are certain to be some in both categories which you had forgotten.

- John Nirenberg of Brattleboro, VT is walking from Boston to DC to bring a message to Nancy Pelosi, demanding impeachment. As of the evening of January 7 he and a few others are a little north of Baltimore, expecting to arrive in DC, on schedule, on Saturday. For info and to offer support, this is the link.

- Speaking of that, as I expect you know, former Sen. George McGovern had on op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. "Nixon was bad. These guys are worse," he said. The first vote I ever cast was for McGovern for president in 1972. I've no regrets.

- The ACLU is calling for a day of protest this Friday, January 11, demanding the closure of Gitmo. If you can't get to an event, you can at least sign the petition and try wear something orange that day.

And even a geek item: According to a new study,

[c]omplex life on Earth may have blossomed during two "explosions," not one....

Earth's biggest species diversification occurred 542 million years ago, during what's called the Cambrian explosion. But a similar and rapid burst in evolution occurred 33 million years prior, researchers now think. They've dubbed the event the Avalon explosion.

The Cambrian explosion, a geologically short period of time in which every modern phylum seems to have appeared, has been somewhat controversial precisely because of the rapidity of the change. This new study would seem to support the idea that such rapid change is in fact possible.