gregladen | March 15, 2010Or at least that is what we may infer from the recent legislative activity in one of America's most socially backwards states, Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill Thursday that would limit what authorities can do when prosecuting hate crimes.
The bill would prohibit local and state law enforcement agencies from sharing information about hate crimes with federal authorities if the state of Oklahoma did not recognize the crime as a hate crime by its own statutes.
The Oklahoma Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community condemned the bill's passage.
source, whole story
I…
gregladen | March 15, 2010The most unpatriotic woman in America, Michele Bachmann, is starting to get all loud and obnoxious again (she goes in cycles, like red tide and bad influenza years). Now she is saying that if a health care bill is passed under certain procedures that she happens to not like, it should be ignored, and American Citizens should not pay their taxes.
In the following video, skip forward to about 19 minutes and listen for about two minutes or so to get the gist. Also, see this writeup.
Hat Tip Ana
gregladen | March 15, 2010I am annoyed with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
I'm annoyed for a lot of reasons that I won't go into now, but mainly for one aspect of this problem: The idea of a mat of solid garbage extending across a portion of the Pacific Ocean that is the size of Europe (or whatever) is startling. It is the kind of thing that attracts attention, brings people to the table to discuss and consider conservation issues, and makes people want to be more aware of the environment, and to do something positive.
But, when people find out that there is no Pacific Garbage Patch, that they've been lied to by…
gregladen | March 14, 2010I have several dark things to report. Two really bad things happened to me this evening; Some news about how bad Microsoft is; And an underwater robot meets Davey Jones' locker.
First an update on the knee. The good news is that the swelling is reduced. The bad news is that the swelling seems to have kept some of the internal parts stabilized and now they are rubbing around against each other painfully. Strange things I've not seen before are protruding form the region of the incision. But no sign of infection, so I suppose it is OK.
The bad things that happened: 1) I watched Mama Mia…
gregladen | March 14, 2010It was already known that we were totally doomed, but now there is a new and exciting scenario. In this one, comets rain down on us from the Ooort Cloud, said comets loosened by contact and interaction with a star called Gliese 710.
Gliese 710 is one of a handful of stars that have had recent interactions with our solar system, or plan to in the future.
there is 86 percent chance that Gliese 710 will plough through the Oort Cloud of frozen stuff that extends some 0.5 parsecs into space.
That may sound like a graze but it is likely to have serious consequences. Such an approach would send…
gregladen | March 14, 2010"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family.
Read the whole thing here
gregladen | March 14, 2010Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, has a fighting chance of beating the incumbant Republican, Roy Blunt, in the upcoming Senate race in Missouri.
According to Rasmussen:
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Blunt leading Carnahan 47% to 41%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided. Those figures are little changed from a month ago.
source
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gregladen | March 13, 2010A few days back, the phone rang and I stupidly answered it. I usually don't unless I know who it is, but lately I've been getting a lot of phone calls from health insurance adjusters and therapists and whatever-whatever, so I've taken to actually answering the damn thing sometimes.
So this lady is on the other end of the phone line telling me that she is a "professional fund raiser" and "this call may be recorded" and all about how the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is gonna use my money to make sure there are more Democrats in the Senate, yadda yadda.
I interrupted her. I said…
gregladen | March 13, 2010I'm not sure how good this is, but if you are a Star Wars Geek you are obligated to watch it and complain about it.
Hat Tip: Miss Darth Vader C.
gregladen | March 13, 2010Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:
Write a letter to Charles Darwin explaining why you believe biblical creationism is more plausible and reasonable than Darwin's theory of evolution.
Aubrea's essay is here in PDF form. The web site with other essays, the rules of the contest, and additional information is here.
I invite you to review this essay and comment on its veracity and validity.
Hat tip: Scott Lohman
gregladen | March 13, 2010Plastic in the oceans is probably a problem, but it is probably not the problem you think it is.
For one thing, it is not as big a problem as deforestation, and I am unhappy that we hear a lot more about the Pacific Garbage Patch than we hear about deforestation these days. For another thing, a lot of the anti-Garbage Patch rhetoric is going to blow up in our faces when it is discovered that you can't even see the garbage patch. Seriously. If you could see it, there would be pictures of it somewhere in the video I provide below. All of the pictures of garbage floating around in this video…
gregladen | March 13, 2010Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness.
story
gregladen | March 12, 2010After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
NYT
gregladen | March 12, 2010A current study in Science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology seems to demonstrate how Thalidomide causes birth defects. Here's the abstract from the paper:
Half a century ago, thalidomide was widely prescribed to pregnant women as a sedative but was found to be teratogenic, causing multiple birth defects. Today, thalidomide is still used in the treatment of leprosy and multiple myeloma, although how it causes limb malformation and other developmental defects is unknown. Here, we identified cereblon (CRBN) as a thalidomide-binding protein. CRBN forms an E3 ubiquitin ligase complex with…
gregladen | March 12, 2010Fundamentalist Christian dentist promotes drastic curriculum change.
Click here then click "Texas Textbook Controversy part way down the middle column.
gregladen | March 12, 2010A lesbian student wanted to wear a tuxedo and accompany her girlfriend to the prom in a Northern Mississippi school district. Chaos ensued. It turns out that Itawamba County school district has an explicit policy requiring that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex. (This is the same school district that got in trouble some years back for intercom-led prayer and bible sessions.)
The AClU dove in. The school district canceled the prom but refuses to say exactly why.
So, look for a private non-school related anti-gay prom-like "event" to occur in Itawamba County this spring.
"It is…
gregladen | March 12, 2010In which the Isis and Zuska Tag Team takes down Laden (temporarily) and a free for all breaks out on the blogosphere.
Is this another intrablogule iron cage death match? No, it's the real thing! In cartoon form....