tqa | April 13, 2009
As of when I'm writing this post, a Google News search for the words "Inhofe" and "treason" returns no hits. When I search on "Inhofe" and "sedition", I get the same results. That's also true for a search on the milder combination of "Inhofe" and "inappropriate". What the hell is going on here?
I realize this is old news, but one week ago yesterday, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) issued a press release and the YouTube video embedded below. I don't understand why I'm not seeing any outrage.
Just in case you're audio was malfunctioning, or you just didn't believe your ears, those helicopters…
tqa | April 12, 2009
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
Carl Sagan
Cosmos
tqa | April 11, 2009
That's what life is like. You have to keep running on the treadmill of evolution or you fall off.
Bill Nye, The Science Guy
tqa | April 9, 2009
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi…
tqa | April 8, 2009
Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to Wilkins:
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.
Bertrand Russell
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Doorway
Natural History Museum
Oxford
tqa | April 7, 2009
"The secular humanist did it in the schoolhouse with misinformation!"
The Simpsons
"Bart Has Two Mommies"
tqa | April 7, 2009
Yesterday, Phil posted a lego version of this scene, so I thought it would be a good time to post the real thing.
Atlantis on Launch Complex 39-A
6 April 2009
This picture is obviously looking at the back side of the vehicle, but the orbiter would not have been visible even if I had a view from the opposite side of the pad - the Rotating Service Structure is in place and covers the orbiter.
tqa | April 7, 2009
Since I'm currently out of town, original content is going to be in short supply for a few days. Fortunately, there are a few things I've written over the years that I think people might still enjoy (or at least tolerate). Since they didn't get read much when I first posted them, I thought I'd give them another chance. This one threatens to get a bit recursive - it's a trip down memory lane to look at another trip down memory lane. It was originally posted at the old blog on 6 September 2005.
Just when I had begun to think that we had pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel of…
tqa | April 6, 2009
The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects--in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something.
Steven Jay Gould
Wonderful…
tqa | April 6, 2009
On Thursday, a Colorado jury found that Ward Churchill had been improperly fired, and awarded him $1 in damages. Right now, I've got very mixed feelings about the verdict. That's not a surprise, of course, since I've had mixed feelings about the entire situation almost since the start.
For those of you who either aren't aware or have forgotten about the case, Churchill was a professor at the University of Colorado who stirred up a bit of controversy when an essay that he wrote about the 9/11 attacks came to national attention. In that essay, Churchill blamed the victims for the attacks,…
tqa | April 5, 2009
This is a short one, and it might not technically be a quote, but it was written down and it's wrong on so many levels I just had to share it:
Evolve. Use a condom every time.
Advertising slogan seen on a Trojans display
tqa | April 5, 2009
Since I'm currently out of town, original content is going to be in short supply for a few days. Fortunately, there are a few things I've written over the years that I think people might still enjoy (or at least tolerate). Since they didn't get read much when I first posted them, I thought I'd give them another chance. This post originally went up at the old blog on 15 September 2005. I was inspired to repost it after reading some of what Orac's written about his new, stubborn, and intelligent puppy.
I've been able to resist, for the most part, blogging about the cute things that my kids…