Carnivalia and an open thread

Must catch up on neglected linkage. Must take nap. Everyone is on their own for a little while as I try to get my brain out of its fog. I'm too old to skip an entire night's worth of sleep.

More like this

While the conference site is down and before the new one is built, I need, for myself, a list of blog carnivals I follow, so here I am putting it here for my own reference (let me know if I am missing a delightful and useful carnival - if you manage one of them, make sure I am on your mailing list…
I'm taking a little downtime from the busy con fun-and-games, and catching up with the various carnival announcements. Mendel's Garden Friday Ark #122 Carnival of Education #102 Four Stone Hearth #7 Skeptics' Circle #52 Carnival of the Liberals #30 I'm here in Michigan for several…
August Scientiae Carnival: Balance Questions and Answers, now up on Twice. Skeptics' Circle Number 66 - Summary of Abstracts is up on Denialism blog. Friday Ark #150 is up on Modulator.
Here's a slew of good stuff to entertain you on a pleasant Friday, the last day of finals week here at UMM. I have to give my genetics students their final exam in a short while—I fear they are not having a happy time right now. When they're done, though, the sun will be shining, commencement…

Archaeologists discover 8-million-year-old forest in Hungary

BUKKABRANY, Hungary (AFP) - Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary.
.
"The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified," Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP.
...
"The exceptional state of preservation of the trees is due to a sudden sandstorm which covered the forest (with sand) up to a height of six metres," Kazmer said.
...

Six meters of sand in a "sudden" sandstorm? Perhaps climate change is not as benign as the right wing apologists would have us believe.

By Reginald Selkirk (not verified) on 06 Aug 2007 #permalink

Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
...

By Reginald Selkirk (not verified) on 06 Aug 2007 #permalink

No One Cares, Mr. Pope

The Pope has come out in the last few weeks and reiterated two things: first, no other religion but Catholicism is divinely supported; second, evolution is consistent with Catholicism's doctrine. But while both made headlines and the former comment was furiously blogged about, truly very few took notice. Even Catholics.

The satirical blog, Baptists for Brownback has a comment on the Scarlet A campaign... They've decided to copyright the remaining 25 letters of the alphabet in the name of Christianity, which has led to one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Please enjoy.

Hi there.

Long time reader, first time poster.

I was at the YearlyKos Convention and during the breakout session with Sen. John Edwards I got the opportunity to ask him about how he planned to address the concerns of atheists who are put off by politicians always using religious language. He had a very good answer saying that he preferred to use the language of morality rather than the language of faith because the President needs to represent everyone whether they believe in the Christian God, some other form of god, or no god at all. He asked me if I had any objection to his using the word "moral" and I said no, "you don't need to believe in God to be moral" and that comment elicited a round of applause from the room.

I wrote about this in my DailyKos Diary and it has sparked a lot of comment discussion over there. If you are interested in reading the full account you can go here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/6/13936/85325

Thanks.

-Derek

Oh, man, did I mess up.

I'm really sorry about that booby explosion up there. I've been working on some command-line posting utilities and it looks like I've got an error in there that created booby-apocalypse.

By wÓÒ† (not verified) on 06 Aug 2007 #permalink

So many boobies!

In other news, the Library of Congress properly sorts Bibles into the BS subclass. Google "Library of Congress Classification System" to check it out (Scienceblogs isn't letting me post URLs...)

I'm surprised I haven't seen a comment about these Jesus Toys yet.

I hope this doesn't cause another booby-apocalypse.