Carnivalia, and an open thread

Hey, not many carnival announcements this week. You know, if you've got a carnival that is in some way related to science, biology, godlessness, academia — my usual obsessions — feel free to send me notices and I'll mention them in my weekly carnival roundup.

The Tangled Bank

Next week's Tangled Bank will be at Epigenetics News. send your science links in to me or host@tangledbank.net before 9 May.

This is an open thread. Go to it!

More like this

When is the big Kirk Cameron debate, and does anyone have the link to watch it?

Thank you for the Blogroll lovin', PZ. Deeply appreciated!

I've sent a donation to the Cephalopod Deification Fund, in your name.

It's sort of the same as saying "Kurt Vonnegut is in Heaven, now." I hope that you appreciate the gesture!

Cheers, and always yours...

Monkeyfister

No Accountability?

Deepak Chopra

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/no-accountability_b_47647.h…

"Accountability seems to lead to zealous, self-righteous crusaders of the worse sort. Yet on the other side, the Bush administration has so thoroughly corrupted the practice of truth-telling that the choice of no accountability seems just as unpalatable. (At the World Bank the woes of Paul Wolfowitz have little to do with his hiring a girlfriend so much as long-held resentment that he was shoved down the Europeans' throats by the Bush Administration, a reward to a neo-conservative militarist that was shocking to begin with, almost as shocking as giving George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for botching the intelligence over weapons of mass destruction.)

I doubt that anyone will be seriously held accountable soon on any of these fronts. We use mockery and public humiliation too freely; therefore, it's hard to know what genuine accountability would be. Especially this is so among those who have no conscience, and that includes a broad segment of militarists and neo-conservatives. In the end, too many of the innocent are held accountable, as the families of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians know all too well. the best kind of accountability would be to wipe the slate clean of all the corrupt ideologies that led us into these moral quagmires."

I just had a badass idea. We need a good pagan revival. Next time some pagan holiday rolls around, PZ should un-band John A. Davison so he can run naked through the threads while we tear him limb-from-limb in a drunken frenzy.

Thanks PZ for picking up the story about the death of "Darwin is dead". As a result of that link, I had something of a blog storm at Duo Quartencia, with hits rates initially at over 200 an hour, covering some (so far) 37 nations. It was a hell of a kick off for a blog not yet a week old!

In your honour I have now added a discussion on the evolution of wings, which is submitted to tangled bank. I'm not a biologist or a paleontologist; and if anyone finds errors or defects in the post I'd appreciate it.

There's also a post on a better way to write numbers which is part of the carnival of mathematics, mentioned above. There's a lot of interesting stuff there for those with a mathematics bent.

I'm tinkering in the background to try and clean up the design and layout and to fix problems with feeds. Anyone here who does drop in, if you have any suggestions I'll be grateful!

I plan to be adding a new post soon, showing what happens when Pharyngula links to you, and soliciting feedback on presentation. In the meantime suggestions left anywhere will be welcome.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18498435/

"In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a 'person.'"

If I got this right, I'm all for it. Chimps suffer, they can feel happy, and they have the cognitive abilities at least higher than a 3 year old child (right?). We try to help people and give children rights not because of their cognitive abilities, but because they can experience the same emotions we do. There is no difference between chimp and human suffering. Suffering is suffering.

"In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a 'person.'"

What rights would this entail? Would chimps be given the right to vote? I'd have to oppose that, they might favor W as a favorite son and run him for a third term.

I'd have to oppose that, they might favor W as a favorite son and run him for a third term.

Oh please. You really think chips are THAT stupid?