Carnivalia, and an open thread

Has anyone else heard about this idea to generate electricity?

http://www.magenn.com/

It sounds kind of interesting, but at the same time, my crap detector's meter is almost into the red zone. It's halfway through into the yellow.

A news creationist museum is setting up shop in Florida. They call it a Gospel Fossil Park. http://www.flascience.org/wp/

Baird, who is a former lecturer for an apologetics ministry, Answers in Genesis, said having a permanent place for the museum allows him to make it more attractive, making it easier to attract public school groups.

Gotta love it.

Oops. Sorry. Looks like I jumped the gun. PZ just now posted about the museum.

Science-themed lolcats! Get 'em before the meme is obsolete!

Oh man, that was funny. You should have done one like, "in ur fermions, bein antisymmetric!" with cat spin states being listed above their heads.

Actually, I'm going to go spin a cat right now.

OK, so I just saw this news:

Ministers bow to hybrid pressureMinisters have bowed to pressure to allow the creation of human animal hybrid embryos for research.

Now I'm wondering why is this even controversial? Even I got a bit of some weird feeling before I clicked on the link, before reality kicked in. I guess what I'm asking from scientifically literate people (that's you) is if there's any reasons not to pursue this kind of research that is not based on religious preconceptions.

Thanks for any comments.

Since this is an open thread:
Bam.
Oral sex may increase HPV linked cancer in men.

I wonder if this will get the misogynist social conservatives to change their tunes. I'm betting it won't, since they probably think oral sex is some kind of "Go Directly to Hell" card.

Of late I have been pondering the biassed nature of language. I use phrases like 'Thank god!', 'god only knows' and a kajillion (at last count) other religion-related terms, not the least of which is 'go to hell'.

And of course whenever I do, someone is liable to say something like, 'See? That proves you believe in god!' Which is lame, but then if logic were their strong point they would not be believers.

So my question is, is there a good list somewhere of substitute phrases? Has this been discussed to death already?

And what phrases do you use?

This week's "Candorville" comic is about the hate crime legislation.

Monday:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070514/cx_cand_uc/cand20070…

I know what you're going to say: race, money, etc.

But it's the survey that caught my attention. Basic math is within everyone's grasp. Why did this neighborhood calculate the statistics, when others haven't?

Is a culture that historically has relied heavily on community to get through adversity not well-suited for dealing with crises in an individualistic instead of communal way?

shouldn't that museum be at flawed-science.org? In contrast, Minnesota has a museum to hold quackery up to ridicule--the museum of questionable medical devices, also known as the Science Museum of Minnesota. Maybe PZ-ism is spreading!

Blake Stacey, thanks so much for the physics LOLcats!

Drat. What happened to my link? Let's try that again.

New Orleans neighborhood rescues itself

"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one." Jimmy Carter