Day before Turkey Day…

Good Evening…

Many of you are probably getting ready for a feast tomorrow…I’ve got our turkey defrosting in a pot of water now, and I am not looking forward to sticking that bird in a hot over…babysitting it for hours. Nope, I don’t have any holiday spirit at all this year, which come to think of it, I didn’t have it last year either.

Here are a few items of interest off the Memeorandum site:

The GOP is pushing to repeal Obamacare…nothing ever changes.  Shame of it all is that if Obama fought and passed the single-payer option, things would be much better for everyone. Anyway, you can read it here:  White House To Boehner: Obamacare Not Part Of Fiscal Cliff Deal

The Republicans are also taking to attacking Obama’s foreign policy again as well, and again I say, nothing ever changes.  GOP Senators Attack Obama, Praise Egyptian President In Statement On Gaza Ceasefire

And one more story from the headlines, Soledad O’Brien kicks ass and takes names…fortunately for us, her style of journalism and integrity never changes either.  CNN Host Exposes GOP’s Hypocrisy On Benghazi

O’BRIEN: I have asked others before how this does not compare, the Susan Rice issue, to the Condoleezza Rice issue on weapons of mass destruction. She was also wrong when she was the national security adviser, right? … Fast forward three years in 2005 when she was up to be secretary of state, it was Lindsey Graham who was furious that the Democrats were pushing back. It was Sen John mccain who were furious that the Democrats were pushing back on Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. She was wrong on weapons of mass destruction. How is this different?

BURGESS: The difference is the scrutiny provided by our free press in this country. Condoleezza Rice was exposed to withering criticism by the press. I don’t see that happening now. Maybe I’ve missed something in the talking points, but I don’t see that happening. ….

O’BRIEN: So you’re confusing me there for a moment. When you say the scrutiny on the press — are you saying five days after comments of weapons of mass destruction, you feel like the media was picking apart Condoleezza Rice? I don’t think that’s true, Sir. Most people say that’s not the case. It took a long time. …. Hey, I’m all about scrutiny. I guess I like consistency, too. You were not calling for more scrutiny and you weren’t saying that the fact that Condoleezza Rice was wrong on weapons of mass destruction was going to damage her credibility as secretary of state. Again, McCain and Lindsey Graham were supporting that. It seems contradictory to me.

BURGESS: You’ll have to take that up with Senator McCain and Senator Graham.

Now I will bring you three links that are not getting much notice around the political blog scene…pity this first one is being missed by most of the right-wing crowd, there is something funny about a bunch of monkeys being smarter than the folks chosen to represent the people. (I guess that does not say much for the ones who put them in office in the first place.) h/t FDL

Frans de Waal shows us a task he gave Capuchin monkeys to see if they responded to a sense of fairness. For the full video see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJxRqTs5nk

Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape. His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He is a Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.

So, monkeys can understand the concept of equal pay…why can’t we just get some of these primates elected to Congress?

My daughter suffers from this next disorder…I do too, Math Anxiety: The Brain Can Feel The Pain

Worry about math can trigger regions of the brain associated with the experience of physical pain and instinctive risk detection, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and published in PLOS ONE.

Ian Lyons and his team of researchers discovered that in people who experience high levels of anxiety when anticipating math tasks, encountering math increases activity in regions of the brain connected with the feeling of physical pain. The more elevated a person’s math anxiety, the greater the appearance of neural activity is.

The investigators explained, “We provide the first neural evidence indicating the nature of the subjective experience of math-anxiety.”

Take a look, it is interesting to read about the way math-anxiety affects the brain.

There is one thing I do know, none of these Nasa scientist do not suffer from any form of math-anxiety. Curiosity Rover’s Secret Historic Breakthrough? Speculation Centers on Organic Molecules

Much of the internet isbuzzing over upcoming “big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists are keeping quiet about the details.

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.

The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking, Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other scientists are free to speculate.

“If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,” says planetary scientist Peter Smith from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Smith is formerly the principal investigator on a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix lander, which touched down at the Martian North Pole in 2008. “It may be just a hint, but even a hint would be exciting.”

Well, it sounds like whatever it is, it is going to be neat as hell!

That is all I have for you tonight, I gotta go squeeze the fresh lime, lemon and oranges to make the “sour orange” marinade.

Hope you all have a wonderful and safe day tomorrow, enjoy the time with your families.

This is an open thread.