February 22, 2011
A 6.3 earthquake has just struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens and leaving dozens more buried in rubble with rescue workers trying to dig them out. On the TV this morning, the mayor of Christchurch told his story: Having just left a series of meetings, he was sitting on a…
February 21, 2011
Is your car stuck in the snow? There are two ways to get it out. The wrong way and the right way. Here's the wrong way:
Ignore the snarky comment at the beginning of the video. According to sources with the SPFD and the News, this car caught on fire for the same reason about two or three dozen…
February 21, 2011
A child who is killed by an abusive parent is, in a sense, avenged by the law which seeks to identify, charge, try, convict, sentence and punish such a parent. Abuse might include something obvious like striking a child with a weapon, but it can also include starving the child to death or other…
February 21, 2011
The son of Libyan leader Gadhafi/kadafi claims that the "government" (which is not really true but its complicated) will fight to the last bullet against people engaged there in an uprising.
Even as Seif al-Islam Gadhafi spoke Sunday night, clashes were raging in and around Tripoli's central…
February 20, 2011
As Libya and Gaddafi move to a more prominent place in the news, I thought I'd point to a few posts on the topic. As an Africanist Archaeologist, I've got a special interest in Libya (though I've never worked there or visited). Haua Fteah is there. Haua Fteah is a cave facing north and…
February 20, 2011
This post has had a movement, to this new location.
February 20, 2011
The Skeptics Community is asking for people to help LaVerne. Bad things happened to her and her family. A few bucks from everybody would be nice. Please click here and make a small contribution.
February 19, 2011
Dinosaurs aren't the only source of fascination for paleontologists. Paleontology is a descriptive science that uses a variety of sources for information on how evolution has shaped life to what it currently currently consists of, and paleontologists look to the past through fossilized bones,…
February 18, 2011
Two local stories you might be interested in from my neighborhood.
First, a girl high school wrestler advanced yesterday but was beaten today in the state tournament in Iowa. Why is this interesting? Well, first, this is not a girl wrestling on a girl's team. It is a girl wrestling on the…
February 18, 2011
A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing - trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it…
February 18, 2011
Don't Miss Skeptically Speaking #99 Quacks and Scams, with Dr. Stephen Barrett of QuackWatch , James Randi and Jamie Williams.
Details here
February 18, 2011
These stories are closely related at a philosophical level: Both stalwart entities have similar philosophies about what they think they can tell other people to do, how they do things, and what they fear:
Libyan dictator warns against use of Facebook, 40 protesters injured
Many Libyan Internet…
February 18, 2011
Are you? If not, you can click here and be my Facebook friend. I don't need you to do that but it would be better if you did, just in case. It's good for you, it's good for me, really, you should do it. You need to do it. I don't really need it but maybe you do. You should, don't you think?…
February 17, 2011
Birders in every hemisphere spend this time of year preparing for the Great Migrations. It does not matter where you live, several species of birds are going arrive at your location, pass through, or simply come out of or flee to the woods or marshes as Spring or Fall approaches. This means it is…
February 17, 2011
From Mn Atheists:
Drs PZ Myers and Greg Laden will be our guests on today's show. PZ is in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro for a pair of talks this weekend. First he will be presenting "The Evolution of Cooperativity" to the Humanists of Minnesota on February 19th, and on the 20th he will be…
February 16, 2011
Did anyone notice the straw poll results from the CPAC convention? CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. With all this talk about Palin and Bachmann and Palin/Bachmann and Bachmann/Palin and so on and so forth, one would be surprised if they didn't come in at or near the top of…
February 16, 2011
Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to…
February 16, 2011
Wanna know what tabagging racism sounds like? Go to about 2 minutes, listen through 4 minutes or so.
Back story at Think Progress
February 16, 2011
How do you separate harmless belief in religion or superstition and ... well, harmful belief in religion or superstition? We have been having a bit of a go-round* between some of my regular blog readers, including my Catholic but not anti-Evolution niece whose daughter recently acted in a…
February 16, 2011
Youth for Tolerance, Invisible Children, Save Darfur coalition, Million votes against farc ... Who are these organizations connected to? There is a long list of them. Who is the US State Department working with? MTV? NBC? We need to keep an eye on them. We can't tell if they are right or clean…
February 16, 2011
I'll be interviewing PZ Myers on Sunday on Atheist Talk Radio in the Twin Cities. I can't think of a thing to ask him about ... what would YOU suggest?
Write your proposed questions or topics in the comments below.
February 16, 2011
On the left is the comet minding its own business. On the right is a blobish roundish area where NASA's impactor probe hit the comet.
I know, I know, it looks mainly like they just unfocused the image. It turns out that many of the images in the "after" sequence have a crappy focus, but there…
February 15, 2011
But you won't stand for it.
Later this week the House will vote on HR 1, a "continuing resolution" (CR) to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY 2011. HR 1 would cut NIH funding by $1.6 billion (5.2%) BELOW the current level - reducing the nation's medical research budget to $29.4…
February 15, 2011
NASA's Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:39 p.m. PST (11:39 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011. The comet was first visited by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
PASADENA, Calif. -- Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,…
February 15, 2011
South Dakota would make the killing of abortion providers legal.
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus--a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions.…
February 15, 2011
I did not get on the Tiger Hating bandwagon when it was revealed that he had a wife and 19 girlfriends. First, I'm sure they were all having a great time at some point. Second, I can see where his wife would be pissed off but she did marry a golfer after all. What else was she expecting????…
February 14, 2011
House Bill 368 (PDF), introduced in the Tennessee House of Representatives on February 9, 2011, is the sixth antievolution bill introduced in a state legislature in 2011, and the first introduced in Tennessee since 2007. The bill, if enacted, would require state and local educational authorities to…
