gregladen | December 6, 2007Conservative Radio Talk Show Host Michael Savage is suing the Council on American-Islamic Relations for using a 4-minute bit of his show "The Savage Nation" to raise awareness of his conservative politics among potential advertisers. Savaged called the Queran "a throwback document" and a "book of hate." I wonder what Savage things of, I don't know, the Old Testament, for instance?
"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate," Savage said during the portion of the…
gregladen | December 6, 2007The Testimonial:
I have been abducted by aliens for years... the Thought Screen Helmet, invented by an expert, has stopped the unwelcome visitations and has raised me and my family`s quality of life. Therefore I highly recommend it.
The Product:
From Geekology
gregladen | December 6, 2007Better than what you may ask? Better than:
-Older versions of LInux ... it is always improving.
-Windows. Hands down.
-Apple's operating system before Apple chose, essentially, Linux (a Unix variant) to run its eye candy and development environment on
But why, specifically, is it better?
One reason, apparently, is because the Linux Kernel does not have a stable API.
So what, you ask, is a Kernel and/or an API? Very simple: The Kernel is the guts, the most basic part, the way-down way-down of the operating system. What is the API? That stands for Application Programming Interface. The…
gregladen | December 6, 2007Hey, there's a fight over at Sandwalk. PZ and Larry are going at it as to how good, or bad, this video is:
Click To Play
I'm on the fence. I think it is not true that all genes are switches. Some of them code for structural proteins, for instance. Thousands of genes code for neurotransmitters. There are many genes that are producing products on a regular basis in adult cells that you can't live without.
On the other hand, the video does a good job at explaining the evo devo part of the equation.
I do not like the playing dumb bit in the beginning. Hey, if you don't know that "evo…
gregladen | December 6, 2007From Science Notes, from the continuing series "Why do people laugh at creationists" ... This is installment number six.
gregladen | December 6, 2007Brian Larnder, bless his soul, has written an overview (maybe a book review) of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement
From Brian:
... the concept of eugenics found a very welcome home among the christian faithful of the day from the late 19th Century through the first few decades of the 20th Century. The American Eugenics society sponsored an annual contest for the best eugenics sermon of the year and apparently many clergymen participated, readily supplying biblical quotations to make the case for eugenics.
AHA! I say! (see)
Go and read Brian's post! He…
gregladen | December 5, 2007Go Green! Homemade Diesel - video powered by Metacafe
[hat tip: Curiosity]
gregladen | December 5, 2007Certain ceremonial objects from the Dogon and other cultures of West Africa are known for their dark patina. There is plenty of ethnological evidence that the thick coating on these wood sculptures, which are often in human or animal shapes, contains blood from animals sacrificed as part of the ceremonies. But the presence of blood had not been proved through chemical analysis.
Now, don't get too excited yet ... I've seen this a half dozen times before. The indicators of blood are everywhere in the environment. It is almost impossible to chemically test an artifact and not find evidence of…
gregladen | December 5, 2007A court on Wednesday awarded $11,000 to a woman who said she woke up during major abdominal surgery but was unable to tell doctors she was in terrible pain. ... The 62-year-old retiree in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia had demanded more than $57,000 in compensation for mental and physical suffering during the October 2002 operation, public broadcaster ORF reported.
Then they spilled coffee on her... Ouch.
gregladen | December 5, 2007Legendary designer Philippe Starck -- with no pretty slides behind him -- spends 18 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question "Why design?" Along the way he drops brilliant insights into the human condition; listen carefully for one perfectly crystallized mantra for all of us, genius or not. Yet all this deep thought, he cheerfully admits, is to aid in the design of a better toothbrush.
TED
gregladen | December 5, 2007Eugenics in History and the Bible
I'm getting sick of the constant shrill coming out of the Discovery Institute trying to link "Darwinism" with eugenics. The creationists love to claim that such an idea could never have existed before Darwin came up with the idea of natural selection, but that is patently false.
All animals in the wild abandon unfit babies the moment they're born, even those species without advanced degrees in biology....
Read the rest here at Primordial Blog.
gregladen | December 5, 2007
The African Buffalo is NOT a bison, and it is NOT a "water buffalo" (it is not even the same genus as water buffalo). But like these other beasts, it is a kind of cattle.
The scientific name of the African Buffalo, or Cape Buffalo, is Syncerus caffir. Only the most cynical taxonomists would support the continued use of this term. "Caffer" is the same word as "Kaffir" which in modern usage has the same connotation as "Nigger." The term "caffir" or "kaffir" has been dropped from other species names, but as far as I know, not yet from the Cape Buffalo. I don't know why.
This particular…
gregladen | December 5, 2007Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on.
How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don't be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual…
gregladen | December 5, 2007The flagellum is said to possess "irreducible complexity," meaning it could not have been produced by evolution. This argues for an outside intelligent designer operating beyond the laws of nature.
From Conservapedia.
gregladen | December 5, 2007From Blogfish: Blue Crabs are Disappearing from Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay's famous blue crabs -- feisty crustaceans that are both a regional symbol and a multimillion-dollar catch -- are hovering at historically low population levels, scientists say, as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten the bay's ultimate survivor.
This fall, a committee of federal and state scientists found that the crab's population was at its second-lowest level in the past 17 years, having fallen to about one-third the population of 1993. They forecast that the current crabbing season, which ends…
gregladen | December 5, 2007
National Geographic has a new project called Dino Death Trap. This is a movie due to be released on December 9th, straring the Junggar Basin of western China known as "The Pit of Death" is found.
Don't miss it.
In the mean time, you can go here and there is a live web cam in Central Park showing people walking by. You click on a button and it makes a dinosaur roar from the bushes near the people, and they piss in their pants and run away because they are scared of the dinosaur. Really, not kidding. Go do it now before the cops find out and remove it.