A sizable fraction of the international business community launched an effort to press for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, on the eve of a major round of climate negotiations set to begin Monday in Bali. In an unprecedented show of solidarity, leaders from 150 global companies endorsed the idea of a legally binding framework in a statement published in the Financial Times newspaper. [source] The idea is, of course, that these businesses recognize that this is gong to have to happen, but no one business can do it unilaterally. There are two reasons for that, which are…

The Courier Journal is a regular normal every-day newspaper out of Louisville, Kentucky. James K. Willmot is a normal every-day former science teacher at a Goshen Kentucky school. He works in a lab now in Britain, but he's from Louisville. The following Op Ed in the Courier-Journal by James Willmot should be sobering for anyone living in the readership zone of that paper, or anyone with kids in the area: There is a great educational injustice being inflicted upon thousands of children in this country, a large percentage of whom come from the Kentucky, Ohio and, Indiana areas. The source…

... the fish were terrified ....

Here we have another example of the link between Christian religion, Creationism, and Dishonesty. This time, it is in the post-game analysis of John West's talk at the University of Minnesota, posted on the Discovery Institutes's Web Site. The post by Bruce Chapman, who was not at the talk, is based on "two calls" Bruce got about the talk. It is full of lies and misinformation, which are pretty much obliterated in this post by PZ Myers, which appeared on the Internet only moments ago. What I find most amazing is this: West was asked explicitly if he was making a link between the early…

Grrl Scientist took one of those crazy on line polls and discovered that she's a holiday girl. She notes that the answers to the question "What's your holiday personality?" seems always positive and festive and crap no matter what you answer, and notes "I mean, who wants to be told they are a holiday grinch?" Well, if you look at the questions, its pretty obvious what is going on here. This multiple choice test makes very annoying and, in fact, rather offensive assumptions about the personality, life style, proclivity, and culture of the person taking the test. This is typical Christmas…

This is interesting: 30.11.2007 / 16:23 WWII army bag is found in desert LONDON. November 30. KAZINFORM. A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years. Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army. Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on World War II. The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mrs Ross's sister, Irene Porter. source This happened to me, too.…

John Lynch is reporting: ID supporters seem to like Antony Flew, the one-time atheist philosopher who has apparently seen the light and become a deist. They have awarded him the Phillip Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, they have lauded his latest book, and Bill Dembski exclaims "God bless Antony Flew!" But at the risk of raining on the parade, there's something that Bill needs to realize - the fearless Flew seems to have a very ambivalent attitude (to put it mildly) to eugenics. Prometheus Books recently published its New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, a work to which I provided an entry on…

Never, Ever run with a Deer Antler unless you KNOW HOW TO HOLD IT PROPERLY. From Shelley Batts Blog.

Rosa Parks refuses to move to back of the bus (Montgomery, AL), this day in history, 1953

According to my Linux Calendar, this is the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus AND of Martin Luther King's boycott two years later, AND the independence of both Portugal and the Central African Republic And it is even Anniversary Day in Chatham Islands (when everyone celebrates their anniversary, I suppose). Here is the full output from my Linux Calendar: DEC 01 Woody Allen (Allen Stuart Konigsberg) born in Brooklyn, NY, 1935 DEC 01 First national corn-husking championship, Alleman IA, 1924 DEC 01 Martin Luther King Jr., leads black boycott of…

The pope, Benedict XVI, released an encyclical on Friday stating that atheism was responsibile for great cruelties and violations of justice. In fact, for some of the worst such wrongs in all of history. He offered, as an alternative to athesims, well, actually, catholicism. I call "Bias!" Italy's Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists (UAAR) said by taking such stands the Pope would push more people away from the Church. "The existence of a billion non-believers in the world should be enough to make the Pope understand that man can live very well without God, but with reason," a…

A quick update on the effects of Sidr on the world's largest Mangrove Swamp. The world's largest mangrove forest bore the brunt of the cyclone that smashed into Bangladesh on November 15, killing more than 3,200 people and wiping out thousands of villages. "The cyclone has left huge devastation in the Sunderbans unseen for decades. Some 1,500 square kilometres (600 square miles) of the forest was damaged," chief government forest conservation official A.K.M. Shamsuddin said. "At least seven percent of the (Bangladeshi portion of the) forest was severely damaged... while another 17 to 18…

It has always been suggested, by a wide range of evidence, that australopiths in general, and robust australopiths in particular, have a higer degree of sexual dimorphism than chimps, and possibly, dimorphism in body size as high as one sees in any ape. Resent research on growth patterns, just published in Science, examines this. In dimorphic primates, the larger size of the male is usually obtained by an extended period of growth of the males, so they essentially "grow past" the females. In addition, there are usually additional traits that the larger, adult males have that re not seen…

Yes, you read that right. Finally, the guy has something to contribute: (you may want to watch only the first minutes or so) O'Reilly's point is that every American has the responsibility to take it in the butt from George Bush, no matter what he says.

One time I found an intact skeleton of a large python that had eaten an antelope, but died with the antelope still inside. Cool. But this is even cooler: A fossilized shark that swallowed a crocodile-like amphibian that, in turn, had gobbled up a fish has now been unearthed. This exceptional find marks the first time scientists have found direct evidence of such a complex, extinct food chain. Well, maybe. The story is reported here, but I was turned onto it by this must-see post at Science Buzz.

The 1920s. It was a sad, sad time in America. All the biologists got together and, inspired by Darwinian writings, embarked on a campaign to sterilize those they perceived as unfit, the campaign known to us as Eugenics. From Eugenics grew other evils, such as Planned Parenthood, Modern Evolutionary Biology, and The Nazis. Or so intoned John West of the Creationist Discovery Institute, in a talk ending just moments ago at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. The talk itself was rather sad, not just the apocryphal topic. It was executed with a modicum, but only a modicum, of…