South American frog secretions stimulate insulin release (Science Daily):

The paradoxical frog, Pseudis paradoxa, secretes a substance from its skin which protects it from infection. But the molecule, pseudin-2, may have another use for humans. Researchers found that it stimulates the release of insulin, the vital hormone which is deficient in diabetes sufferers.

Which brings to mind the vision of millions of diabetics and pre-diabetics getting into the whole toad-licking thing.  And yeah, I know that toads and frogs are different, and that diabetes is nothing to laugh at.

Still . . .

Professor Gerard Hodgkinson says "go with it!"

Prof Hodgkinson believes that all intuitive experiences are based on the instantaneous evaluation of such internal and external cues – but does not speculate on whether intuitive decisions are necessarily the right ones.

“Humans clearly need both conscious and non-conscious thought processes, but it’s likely that neither is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other,” he says.

As a Chartered occupational psychologist, Prof Hodgkinson is particularly interested in the impact of intuition within business, where many executives and managers claim to use intuition over deliberate analysis when a swift decision is required. “We’d like to identify when business people choose to switch from one mode to the other and why – and also analyse when their decision is the correct one. By understanding this phenomenon, we could then help organisations to harness and hone intuitive skills in their executives and managers.”

I mean, really, how can you NOT believe someone named "Professor Gerard Hodgkinson?"

Note:  This blog entry is on top for a while.  Scroll down to read more recent stuff.  Thanks.

I see my good and dear friend Terry Vandrovec has put me in his blog roll.  Thanks, Terry.  (Well, OK.  I introduced myself to him.  Once.  In Shreveport, LA.  Terry must be pretty easy, blog-roll-wise.)

Yeah, I'm a South Dakota State University fan, and a pretty rabid one at that.  I run the SDSUFans.com site, which you can go to here.  (Hey, you can go ANYWHERE from here.  Heh.)  SDSUFans.com has a discussion board, where all the action is.  The board is here.

Medary.com is my own personal blog site, where I post things of interest and/or amusement that I come across, as I come across them.  I'm basically of the "leave me the heck alone" political persuasion, who at least recently has identified more with the Republicans than with the Democrats.  I'm open to change, however.  Other issues I post about concern global warming/climate change (still a skeptic, but not quite a "denier" yet), the Iraq War (for it iniitally, and while that might have been a mistake, we're there now and since we are, we might as well win it), politics in general, and science-stuff that happens to catch my eye and interest me.

Oh, I also travel.  A lot.  Sometimes to SDSU basketball and (less frequently) SDSU football games  Sometimes around the world.  If my wife (Snookums) has her way, the Round-The-World stuff will be posted tomorrow.  After I drive home from Brookings to beautiful, wonderful, somewhat-warmer-than-Brookings Lee's Summit, Missouri.

If you want to contact me, you can assemble my e-mail address by figuring out medary (at-sign) medary (dot) com, and putting that into your e-mail client of choice and asking very nicely for an account here at medary.com.  Then you can post comments here (and, for all I know, blog articles, too, I haven't really paid much attention to that).

Greetings, enjoy, and Go Rabbits!

Buckley, of course, had a pretty wide libertarian streak, one which is ignored or downplayed by modern conservatives.

Via Reason Hit and Run, an article in Commentary by Mr. Buckley himself::

In the next issue of my magazine, National Review, I published a 5,000-word excoriation of Welch:

How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.

In response, National Review received the explicit endorsement of Senator Goldwater himself, who wrote a letter we published in the following issue:

I think you have clearly stated the problem which Mr. Welch’s continued leadership of the John Birch Society poses for sincere conservatives. . . . Mr. Welch is only one man, and I do not believe his views, far removed from reality and common sense as they are, represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society. . . . Because of this, I believe the best thing Mr. Welch could do to serve the cause of anti-Communism in the United States would be to resign. . . . We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.

The wound we Palm Beach plotters delivered to the John Birch Society proved fatal over time. Barry Goldwater did not win the presidency, but he clarified the proper place of anti-Communism on the Right, with bright prospects to follow.

Who will stand up and tell the Ron Paul conspiracy wackos to bugger off?  Who will stand up for classical American liberty and freedom?  (Don't tell me it's Obama--he's just another smooth-talking socialist.)

Where is freedom's champion.  Will he (she) appear before it's too late?  And when will it be too late?

Somebody's priorities are way out of whack.  And that somebody, collectively, is us.

Like Coyote Blog, I wonder about the wisdom of the lock'em'up strategy of the "War on Drugs."  I think we're locking up lots of the wrong kind of people.  The people to incarcerate are the ones who present an immediate danger to others.  Some loser toking weed behind the high school football stadium doesn't qualify.

There is, of course a racial component.  We're throwing lots and lots of black males into the klink.  According to the Pew study (.pdf link), one in nine black males between 20 and 39 years old.  Why?  Because modern black culture demands that young black males behave in antisocial ways. 

We're all way too worried about throwing Karl Rove (or, if you wish, the Clinton's latest shady fundraiser) behind bars, and way too unconcerned about teaching kids personal responsibility---too worried about climate change, and not worried enough about teaching kids to respect private property.  I don't think this will turn around any time soon.

The American Spectator takes a look at the Friend to All Socialists:  George Soros . . .

Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England.  He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically in comparative worth almost overnight.

When the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 threatened to spread globally, George Soros was right in the thick of it.  Soros was accused by the Malaysian Prime Minister of causing the collapse with his monetary machinations, and he was branded in Thailand as an "economic war criminal" who "sucks the blood from the people."  Right in the middle of this crisis, Soros dashed off his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, which demanded a "third way" toward economic stability.

Coincidentally, or not, during the height of the fears of worldwide recession, then President Clinton told the New York Times that he was proposing a "third way" between capitalism and socialism.  Unfortunately for Soros, U.S. markets rebounded quickly, his predicted catastrophe was forestalled, and his brave new global economic plans receded for a bit.

This may have been to Soros' own good, though, because he was by 1998 up to his neck in the collapse of the Russian ruble, and buying up valuable East European resources at fire-sale prices.

And why not?

He had already been widely proclaiming that it was his own machinations that brought down the Soviet Empire.  When asked about his sphere of influence in the Soviets' demise for a New Republic interview in 1994, Mr. Soros humbly replied that the author ought to report that "the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire."

Scratch a socialist and what you find is just another thief.  Soros is just better at his thievery than most.

This is just weird enough to be true.

Owning a cat could reduce your risk of a heart attack by nearly one third, researchers told delegates of the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in New Orleans last week. The finding provoked a mixed reaction from heart experts and veterinarians.

The finding was the main result of a 10 year study of more than 4,000 Americans by researchers at the University of Minnesota's Stroke Institute in Minneapolis. Executive director of the Institute, Dr Adnan Qureshi, who is also senior author of the study, was reported by US News & World Report to have said:

Ah.  Minnesota.  That explains the weird part.

Via FuturePundit.

From Blackfive.

Well, no, not really blind.  However, my Bloglines RSS feed of web sites has not updated all day today, leaving me to forage as best I can through my bookmarked web sites by hand.  Ugh.

From BoingBoing:

The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.