Links for 2009-12-15

"Evidence is of no consequence to Medina and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and the rest of the terrified angry mob calling itself a Tea Party because they're not acting based on evidence, or reason, or reality, or honesty. They're acting based on fear -- blind, howling, maddening, confusing fear."

"[W]hen rumors circulated last week that CDMS had a paper coming out in the December 18th issue of the journal Nature, the physics blogosphere went mad in a way that reminded me endearingly of teenage girls pouncing on the latest US Weekly photo of Robert Pattinson holding hands with someone. "

"Well, they've already announced that their expected background, at this juncture, is 0.5 events. So let me tell you what the possible outcomes are, and what they'll mean if you're a responsible scientist."

"The fragmentation of rock/pop has been going on as long as I can remember, but it seemed to cross a threshold this decade. There was just so much music to be into and check out. No genres faded away, they all just carried on, pumping out product, proliferating offshoot sounds. Nor did musicians, seemingly, cease and desist as they grew older; those that didn't die kept churning stuff out, jostling alongside younger artists thrusting forward to the light. It's tempting to compare noughties music to a garden choked with weeds. Except it's more like a flower bed choked with too many flowers, because so much of the output was good. The problem wasn't just quantity, it was quantity x quality. "

""The veil has become a clichéd symbol for what the West perceives as Muslim oppression, tyranny, and zealotry - all of which have little to do with the real reasons why Muslim women veil," says Jennifer Heath, editor of the 2008 book "The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics."

All this attention on the veil brings immense chagrin to Muslims because their faith means so much more to them than what women wear on their heads. But the veil - in its many manifestations - also gives rise to disagreement among Muslims. And their contemporary debate about it, while not yet widespread, raises fundamental questions relating to free will, women's status in society, and even how to interpret Islam's holy book, the Koran."

"An international team of planet hunters has discovered as many as six low-mass planets around two nearby Sun-like stars, including two "super-Earths" with masses 5 and 7.5 times the mass of Earth. The researchers, led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said the two "super-Earths" are the first ones found around Sun-like stars."