gregladen | April 20, 2008Steve Mirsky does a little Darwin Quote Mining reversal exercise in a recent post called "Never You Mine: Ben Stein's Selective Quoting of Darwin:"
One of the many egregious moments in the new Ben Stein anti-evolution film "Expelled" is the truncation of a quote from Charles Darwin so that it makes him appear to give philosophical ammunition to the Nazis. Steve Mirsky reports.
Steve rightly corrects stein, but does not put the quote mining in sufficiently broad context. So I do:
The original text from Darwin that Stein refers to in Expelled! expresses Darwin's ambivalence about the social…
gregladen | April 20, 2008AT&T is making the claim that the Internet will reach its full capacity limit by 2010.
... Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.
"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."
That's scary. The obvious solution is to find…
gregladen | April 20, 2008Not many people know this, but PZ Myers, when he was a little kid, made an appearance on Mr. Science (actually, PZ mentions this often in public lectures as a reason he got into science, but I've never noticed him say anything about this on his blog). This was the first episode ever made, but it was never shown for some reason. This episode was made with an actor who preceded the better known Mr. Science. Apparently the actor in this video made only this one episode, I'm not sure why. Anyway, enjoy!
Hat Tip: PZ Myers
gregladen | April 20, 2008Apparently there are only about 75 known individuals over 110 years of age.
Edna was born on April 20th, 1893 *.
In that year, US Marines invaded Hawaii and overthrew the Hawaiian Queen. Thomas Edison was just finishing off construction of the first movie studio. President of the United States Grover Cleveland underwent secret surgery in this year. Ulysses S. Grant was born in this year. The geologist, not the general/president!
The only important event listed on Wikipieda of this specific day in 1893 was ... wait for it.
The Birth of Edna Parker!!!!!
gregladen | April 20, 2008Louisiana State Senate Bill 561 is an "academic freedom" bill intended to push discussion of creationism, global warming denialism, and so on into state public schools. This is the latest in a long series of efforts of right wing fundamentalist christians to indoctrinate public school students in their particular religious (and political) beliefs.
In 1981, a law was placed on the books in Louisiana requiring that creationism receive equal time as evolution in public schools. The ACLU challenged the bill, and by 1987 it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because, obviously, it…
gregladen | April 19, 2008This is probably the last thing I'm going to say about pseudonymous blogging. I plan to leave the issue behind forever. Or at least for a few days. The "argument" between DrugMonkey - PhsyioProf - BlaBlaBlaBlog ("the clique") and me has become sterile and senseless, primarily because the clique has ruined it. PalMD over at Denialism Blog has noted that this is a terribly pedantic debate, and I would argue that it is only terribly pedantic on a good day. The other day's it is just terrible. By the way, PalMD's post is excellent, I highly recommend it. (But Pal, please see below, because…
gregladen | April 19, 2008
The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 aimed at the U.S. government in which the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in an office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The attack claimed 168 lives and left over 800 injured. Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil.
...
The United States was represented by a team of prosecutors, led by Joseph Hartzler. In his opening statement, Hartzler outlined McVeigh's motivations and the evidence against him. McVeigh's motivation, he said, was hatred of the…
gregladen | April 18, 2008The Best Laid Plans...A homeless man has found confidential blueprints for New York's new Freedom Tower dumped in a city rubbish bin.
Mike Fleming handed the documents - marked "Secure Document - Confidential" in to the New York Post newspaper.
The Freedom Tower is being built at Ground Zero, to replace the World Trade Centre towers destroyed on 9/11.
A spokeswoman apologised for the security breach and said that anyone found responsible would be liable for "serious disciplinary action".
'Game plan'
Mr Fleming said he was concerned that the documents might fall into the wrong hands.
"I was…
gregladen | April 18, 2008Good question ... what IS in the air?
The simple answer is that the air ... the Earth's atmosphere ... is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with a tiny amount of some other gases including water vapor. Then, there's dirt. I want to talk a little about the oxygen, one of the other gases (carbon dioxide to be exact), the water vapor, and the dirt.
Oxygen
The oxygen is one of the most important parts to us because we (and all the other animals) need it to breath. To me, what is most interesting about the oxygen is that in the old days ... before any animals or plants evolved but life…
gregladen | April 18, 2008... the blog carnival, is HERE at Dinosaurs and The Bible: A Creationist's Fairy Tale
gregladen | April 18, 2008Darrow was born this day in 1857. He was a lawyer and a prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
We know him as the defender of John Scopes in the Monkey Trial of 1925. Darrow and Scopes lost that trial, which was the first of many court cases regarding the teaching of creationism vs. evolution in public schools. Virtually all of the subsequent cases were victories for the evolutionists. Indeed, the Monkey Trial was a victory for evolutionists as well, because it is widely recognized that although the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Darrow's arguments were…
gregladen | April 18, 2008
When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.
As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted…
gregladen | April 17, 2008Check out the new Climatology of Global Ocean Winds Atlas:
You can drill down to various segments of the planet (well, the oceans) and loot at wind patterns in great detail, with nice rose plots and everything. (Click on the picture to go to the site.)
Winds are the largest source of momentum for the upper ocean, affecting the full range of ocean movement, from individual surface gravity waves to complete current systems. Ocean winds modulate air-sea exchanges of heat, moisture, gases, and particulates. This modulation regulates the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, which…