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Distances, Position, and Motion in the Universe

At the end of last week, I wrote a post explaining how the Universe is so big (93 billion light years across) when it's only 13.7 billion years old. The key visualization is to think of space as being the surface of an expanding balloon, while all the things in the Universe (stars, galaxies, etc.) are like ants on that surface. Now, I explained to you that two ants will appear to move apart from one another due to the expansion of the Universe, even though neither ant is moving relative to the surface of the balloon. If I use light to measure whether this other ant is moving away from me, I…

Isn't This High School Economics?

Jonah links to a recent paper in the Journal of Political Economy. Here's the summary (pdf here): This study quantitatively assesses the effects of inflation through changes in the value of nominal assets. It documents nominal asset positions in the United States across sectors and groups of households and estimates the wealth redistribution caused by a moderate inflation episode. The main losers from inflation are rich, old households, the major bondholders in the economy. The main winners are young, middle-class households with fixed-rate mortgage debt. Besides transferring resources from…

Bush: Not Exactly for the Working Stiff

From the National Journal comes this story about pay raises (and the lack thereof) in the Bush White House (italics mine): President Bush's most senior aides -- the ones who hold the coveted title of "assistant to the president" -- recently received a $4,200 cost-of-living bump-up in compensation and now earn a top pay rate of $165,200, according to an internal White House list of staff salaries. The list was compiled by the administration for the year that ended June 30 and is displayed both alphabetically, and by dollar ranking, below. Those at the bottom of the White House staff pay scale…

Some Sunday Links

Here are some links for you; science first: Whenever I hear creationists talk about 'information theory', it's always pretty clear that they don't know what they're talking about. ScienceBlogling Mark smacks once such creationist around. Conservapedia mistates mutation (I know, dog bites man). Well, it's related to squid: cool footage of an octopus munching some seafood. The other stuff: While I disagree with the title of PZ's post, he's absolutely right in calling attention to the Cult of Anointing, something I have noted before too. Steven Perez wants his CNN back. Are we headed for a…

Clinton, Obama, and the Mainstream Media Seeing the Trees and Missing the Forest

The NY Times has an article recapping how Obama defeated Clinton in the Democratic primary. The article is a prime example of the myopia that afflicts our political press. And it's not what's in the article, but what's missing. Iraq. In a story of over 4,000 words purporting to describe the campaign, the word Iraq does not appear once. For a fair number of Democrats, the Iraq War featured prominently in their decision to support Obama. More accurately, Clinton's support for the Iraq War* gave Obama an opening. It might not have been a deal breaker, but it certainly encouraged Democratic…

Baboons, breast cancer and blogs.

I was so pleased to have a chance to take part in the Women in Science Symposium at Cornell April 2-3. Thanks to the Cornell faculty and students that put together this wonderful event. For those that could not attend, read the graduate student interviews with the speakers here. Dr. Mary Power is director of the Angelo Coast Reserve, leader in scientific societies, mentor to many successful students, and as an influential figure in several environmental policy debates. Dr. Sharon Long is member of National Academy of Sciences and served as science advisor to President Obama during his…

Love: A Four-Letter Word

For the last few years, Claire L. Evans and friends have been producing a television show designed to teach computers about the human experience. On Valentine's Day, the term technophile got a new meaning on Universe. Claire explains, "we made some valentines for you and your computer to share. After all, you do spend all day staring at each other." On Pharyngula, PZ Myers looks at love throughout the animal kingdom, including among tortoises and penguins who look downright ecstatic in their couplings. Meanwhile, Mike the Mad Biologist encourages forethought before foreplay, showing us a…

All About Antibodies

ERV familiarizes us with the different "layers" of the immune system, including intrinsic, innate, and adaptive immunity. The last layer makes specific antibodies to recognize pathogens, but in the case of HIV, capable antibodies aren't enough to stave off the progression of disease. ERV writes, "HIV-1 evolves to escape these antibodies...and your body can't catch up." The high mutability of HIV-1 makes for a very plastic envelope, meaning the virus continually shifts shape and evades the watchful eye of the immune system. In another post, ERV explains that antibodies make diseases like…

Gold salts for arthritis: how do they work?

Gold salts have been used for a long time to treat arthritis, although how it worked or more pertinently, if it worked, was unclear. Injecting gold salts for inflamed and swollen rheumatic joints took weeks to work and often had nasty side effects: rashes, mouth ulcers, impaired kidney function and sometimes bone marrow depression. My pharmacology professor in medical school taught us the only thing gold was good for as a drug was "itchy palm disease." Now the chief of rheumatology at Duke, DAvid Pisetsky, is telling us we shouldn't be so dismissive: & "We scientists have really never…

We need to get this guy funded and elected!

Never again: Brad Miller on Darfur by Bob Geary: ......I decided one other thing. I could no more imagine Liddy Dole performing in public the way Brad Miller did at Pullen than I could see her admitting that the Bush administration has been a disaster in every conceivable way. Dole doesn't see any mistakes, or at least she doesn't admit them. She's put her energies, since getting elected to the Senate, into Republican politics and nothing else, including fronting the National Republican Senatorial Committee. If she has ever gotten up in front of a small interfaith group and openly agonized…

Crunch Time

Just a couple of quick notes on the run. Busy, busy, busy these days. The conference is next week. Everything is falling nicely into place - the program is taking its final shape, the swag is growing and we have 160 people registered so far - only a couple of more spots left. Lots of things to do over the next few days to make sure that everything goes well. The anthology is in its final proofreading phase - watch this place for the Big Announcement! I also have to clean the house as we are having guests on Sunday, and the kids are both at home sick today (and there is no school on…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Dawkins on evolution and religion

Whether religion is related to survival or not is obviously highly context dependent. It's negatively correlated with survival for minorities in intolerant societies. So why do religious identities persist? I would claim there is evidence they aren't persisting, but the basic question is not something of much interest to me. However it seems to be a preoccupation of many people, because atheists are frequently confronted with the alleged universality of religion, as if that were some argument for its worth or truth. Richard Dawkins seems to agree to the claim that religion is a cultural…

When the Unemployment Runs Out for Millions

From HuffPo, this article about the likely outcome that the Democrats will fail to pass an unemployment extension - unfortunately it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it will be crushingly hard on millions of people who have just been barely making it, and now aren't. The legislation, known as the "tax extenders" bill, would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs. Come Friday, 1.2 million people…

Cleaner Stoves Good for Lungs and Glaciers

In today's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal highlights an intervention that can slow global warming while improving people's respiratory health: cleaner-burning stoves. Primitive cooking stoves emit black carbon (or soot), which researchers now estimate is responsible for 18% of global warming. How does it work? Rosenthal explains: Like tiny heat-absorbing black sweaters, soot particles warm the air and melt the ice by absorbing the sunâs heat when they settle on glaciers. These black airborne particles aren't good for the lungs of those who breathe them in, either. In fact, the World…

The Short Memory of HIV/AIDS denialism

Greta Christina has sent me this link to her wonderful essay discussing the short memory required for HIV/AIDS denialism. It is really a fantastic essay, personal and well-researched, and it covers a very important point. A lot of the anti-science attitudes we see are from people have no memory of what things were like before some medical intervention like vaccines, antibiotics, or in this case HAART. It's easy to think there's no problem with avoiding vaccination, or denying germ theory once the problem of these diseases are so well-controlled that there doesn't seem to be a tangible…

A high school at the zoo!

I rarely wish to be 14 again, but I certainly did when I read this news today, that N.C. Zoo and the Asheboro City Schools have just started something called AHS Zoo School. As Russ Williams explains: "Students have unprecedented access to a 1500-acre, world-class facility ideal for environmental and biological exploration. Beyond routine science, the zoo offers relevant experiences in zoology, horticulture, marketing, retail, hospitality and art as well as wildlife and plant conservation and research. The AHS program is only the fourth zoo school in the country with similar schools located…

Javan Mud Flow Stops Briefly

A massive mudflow that has displaced 15,000 Indonesians on the island of Java stopped flowing for approximately 30 minutes recently. The mud has covered entire villages since it began erupting at the end of last May near the city of Surabaya in east Java. A team has been dropping concrete balls into the hole from where the mud was flowing in an effort to stop the eruption. Four concrete balls are attached to 1.5meter-long metal chains. The team plans to drop 1,500 balls, each weighing up to 250 kilograms (500lbs) into the hole. Some experts doubted that the plan would work, but supporters…

Tulip

The photographer writes, "Shot from the hip in a flower patch in the aviary at Wickham Park. Most of the tulips had bloomed at this point, but this one was still a little shy. Because I'd been looking for birds, I had the 135 and the 2x TC on there, hence the lovely depth of field." Image: grendelkhan. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique…

whaling resumes

Iceland's Fisheries Minister has announced that commercial whaling will resume, with an initial quota of 30 minke whales and 9 fin whales. The minke page is somewhat inaccurate - the meat has been for sale for some years, and is also served in a number of restaurants. It got relatively popular with the surge in interest in traditional cuisine and as the better restaurants focused on local cuisine with local ingredients and modern fusion cuisine. This is distinct from the "scientific whaling" that Iceland has intermittently conducted over the last couple of decades. Current quota for…

Giant Green Spiral Over the North Pole

Quick! Its the Santa Signal! Get the Sled, and Rudolph, fast! Or, a spontaneous study of how many people have cell phones with video capability and fast reflexes! Nice pictures and videos! From altaposten.no - click to embiggen altaposten.no story - in Norwegian, natch From NRK.no - with video - good video Daily Mail in the UK has a good photo and video collection This brought out the UFOfans and conspiracy theorists, what with Obama heading for Scandinavia for the Nobel festivities. Youtube video summarizing story, with several views and videos. Youtube summary of pictures and videos…

Friday Fun: Suffering Blue Whales Plead With Environmentalists To Let Them Go Extinct Already

Sometimes it's only through humour that we can understand just how serious an issue is. This is one of those cases. Heartbreakingly sad yet somehow ringing very true, this one is from The Onion: Suffering Blue Whales Plead With Environmentalists To Let Them Go Extinct Already. NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN--Claiming that their miserable lives had become too depressing to endure, the world's remaining blue whales surfaced Monday and desperately pleaded with environmentalists to immediately cease all conservation efforts so the species could "just be done with it and finally go extinct." The planet's…

The future is roaring your way…

Edge hosted an amazing session that described the looming future of biology — this is for the real futurists. It featured George Church and Craig Venter talking about synthetic genomics — how we're building new organisms right now and with presentiments for radical prospects in the future. Brace yourself. There are six hours of video there; I've only started wading into it, but what I've seen so far also looks like a lot of material that will be very useful for inspiring students about the future of their field. There is also a downloadable book (which is a dead link right now, but I'm sure…

Fatal work injury that killed Ascencion Medina, 44, was preventable, SC-OSHA cites G M Framing

Ascencion Molina Medina’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from South Carolina OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, G M Framing. The 44 year-old was working in July 2015 at a construction project for a residential and retail development called Main + Stone in Greenville, SC.  The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford Construction. The initial press reports indicated that Medina had “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet.  I wrote about the incident but, at the time, I did not have the name…

Fatal work injury that killed Jeffrey Shannon was preventable, OSHA cites AECOM Technical Services

Jeffrey Shannon’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, AECOM Technical Services dba Urs Corporation The 49 year-old was working in March 2015 at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, PA. The facility was being converted from an oil refinery to a natural gas storage and processing plant. AECOM was providing engineering and site preparation for Sunoco. The initial press reported indicated that Shannon was struck by a 1,200 foot pylon. I wrote about the incident shortly…

Me in the New Yorker

I made it into a recent article in The New Yorker. Predictably enough its not about science, but about wikipedia. Whats interesting about it is how hard internal wiki "politics" are for outsiders to understand. Despite talking to the author several times, and a fact-checker, the overall tone of the piece is wrong, as it concerns my bit. I doubt I can explain... So... I wasn't a victim of an edit war, it was various articles that were the victims. Curiously enough, it was the greenhouse effect article that ended up as the chief battleground, and quite bizarrely not over any kind of…

Hovind's Motions to Dismiss

Kent Hovind's attorney has filed motions to dismiss all of the counts against him. Counts 1-12 and 58 (12 counts of failing to pay FICA and withhold income taxes on employees and one count of threatening a Federal agent) are discussed in this motion, while counts 13-57 (46 counts of "structuring") are discussed in this motion. But here's my favorite part of his article discussing the charges: I can only guess what God allowed this for but here are some of the options we have thought of so far: God is testing us like Job. God is punishing us for sin. God was testing other Christian leaders to…

Brutal Attacks on Gays in San Diego

For those ADF and AFA types who think that Gay/Straight Alliance clubs are horrible and shouldn't be allowed, look at this article that details the testimony of a man at a pretrial hearing for 4 thugs, one of them 15 years old, who beat several men nearly to death after a gay pride event in San Diego in July. The gang next went after a man who was sitting on a bench. "They just beat him ... They just kept beating him," Mullins testified. The gang then attacked another man in some bushes. "They yelled 'faggot' at him," Mullins told the court. This is something gays face all the time. It's not…

A godless potpourri

I'm in St Paul, about to give a talk on evolution, and in these few minutes before I get behind the lectern I thought I'd throw together a few links to entertain you all. Have fun, I have to babble! Share your stories of abandoning faith at Coming Out Godless. Revere's Sunday Sermonette is on Fred Phelps and our local ex-bridge. Casual violence isn't a surprising event in the fundagelical community, as in this story of pastor dragging a girl behind a van for the sin of insufficient stamina. The amusing part? The name of the church group is "Love Demonstrated". How about a few fine examples of…

Another creationist serial litigator goes down in flames

Larry Caldwell has a history of suing in California courts for creationist causes. Mike Dunford has some material on the latest attempt to claim that leaving out Christian myths was "viewpoint discrimination", and in particular on their interesting choice of a star witness. The Christian schools hired Dr. Behe (for $20,000) as an expert in "biology and physics." (That second part should make Chad and Rob's heads explode, given that Behe has absolutely no physics experience of any kind.) To earn his fee, Dr. Behe prepared a report that said, basically, that the Christian textbooks are…

Climategate 3.0?

Apparently, something called "climategate 3.0" has occurred. This caused massive excitement in the denialosphere for a day, but now everyone has quietly forgotten it. You can tell its a damp squib because the only even vaguely "mainstream" news report of it that WUWT can find is a blog piece by James Delingpole, a man so unimportant I haven't even bothered call him a tosser. AW managed to find two emails that he thought were really interesting, but his slightly-more-on-the-ball readers pointed out they were already in v2. There's a mildly interesting third one about Oreskes but: is that…

Colliders, Observatories, and Precision Measurements, Oh My!

The editor at Forbes suggested I should write something about the re-start of the Large Hadron Collider, so I did. But being me, I couldn't just do an "LHC, yay!" post, but talk about it in a larger context, as one of three major approaches to filling the gaps in the Standard Model: The big physics story over the weekend was the re-start of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was initially started in 2008, but some key circuits failed shortly after it was switched on. A relatively quick patch job allowed it to operate at half its…

Weekend Diversion: The Greatest Thing Ever on Amazon.com

"There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man." -Winston Churchill There are a number of weird, bizarre, and highly entertaining things out there, and one of the greatest values of the internet is how it allows its users to -- with enough searching and a bit of luck -- uncover things they never would've found before. Each week, I'm proud to expose you to a song and/or an artist you may not have heard of before, and this week I bring you Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and his song, Horses.Of all the songs I could have chosen, that's the one, because I came…

Any Alabama readers? You might want to skip this one — we're laughing at your state

I guess y'all are having a drought, and your farmers are worried. I sympathize, and I do hope you get some good healthy summer storms soon. But, well, your governor is a dufus. With the state's weather forecasters not delivering much-needed rain, Gov. Bob Riley on Thursday turned to a higher power. The governor issued a proclamation calling for a week of prayer for rain, beginning Saturday. Riley encouraged Alabamians to pray "individually and in their houses of worship." "Throughout our history, Alabamians have turned in prayer to God to humbly ask for his blessings and to hold us steady…

Time crystals are real, but that doesn't mean time is crystallized (Synopsis)

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole." -Ralph Waldo Emerson When you think of crystals, you likely think of an interlocked, repeating lattice of atoms or molecules. That’s exactly what a conventional crystal is. But recently, there’s been an exciting new idea, first proposed by Frank Wilczek in 2012: that it would be possible to create a time crystal, an entirely new class of system. Phase diagram of the discrete time crystal as function of Ising interaction strength and spin-echo pulse…

So, when did the Wall Street Journal become a disreputable rag?

Bret Stephens does not mind looking like an idiot. Today, he published a column in the Wall Street Journal that is full of snark and devoid of thought, ill considered, misleading, moronic and in the end, embarrassing. It is a classic case of irresponsible journalism. Someone sent me the link and I swear, I checked twice while reading the piece to see if I had landing on TheOnion.com. I can't believe the Wall Street Journal published this. I think it would have been impossible for a paper like the WSJ to publish a piece like this had main stream media not gotten rid of most of their science…

The 4-methylcyclohexane methanol spill in West Virginia (Coal cleaning chemical)

4-methylcyclohexane methanol is a chemical used to clean coal before it is burned. As you know a region of southern West Virginia where upwards of 100,000 people live has been affected by a spill of this chemical; the water supply in this area has been made unavailable for human use. A 48,000 gallon storage tank for 4-methylcyclohexane methanol has been leaking the chemical into the Elk River, which is part of the municipal water supply in the area. Apparently there isn't a lot known about this particular chemical. It's chemical name is scary looking, and resembles the names of other better…

Links for 2011-08-16

Welcome to the Fall Semester | Wired Science | Wired.com "Sharpen your pencils and charge your laptops. It is time for the next semester to start. How about some tips to those that will be involved. Yes, I am talking to you. All of you." The Only Time the Conservative Politicians Ignore Warren Buffett « Whatever "The worries for the tender sensibilities of the rich has been a hallmark of conservative American politics since time immemorial, but the current gag-inducingly lickspittle levels of it are a bit much. Among other culpable parties, I lay some blame for this at the altar of Ayn…

Weekend Diversion: The Ultimate Superhero Cake (Synopsis)

“When he came home, I could see a change. He was quieter and he was a man and a hero to me. I watched him and listened to him. I’d never had an opportunity to do a superhero, and when that came, [that voice] just came right out of me and I sounded like Optimus.” -Peter Cullen, on his brother If you were a kid in the mid-to-late 1980s, you couldn't have missed the phenomenon of Transformers, and if you were a kid again in the late 2000s/early 2010s, you had another chance to become enamored of these multi-formed giant robots. Have a listen to Tracy Chapman’s reflective and provocative song,…

Weekend Diversion: A better world, effortlessly (Synopsis)

“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.” -Chinua Achebe When you think of charitable enterprises, you probably think of things like eradicating hunger, poverty, or disease of some sort. After all, that's what most charity is: helping others who are less fortunate than we are. But there's also another form of charity, where we put our time, effort and resources into improving the world for everyone. This weekend, have a listen to Beirut's song, Mount Wroclai (Idle Days), while I share with you a…

Can science prove the existence of God? (Synopsis)

“It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.” -Eric Metaxas If we find out that we truly are alone in the Universe, whether there’s no other life, intelligent life, or spacefaring life, there’s no doubt that makes us special. But does that make us divinely chosen? Or, even more to the point, does that mean that the Universe was designed to give rise to human beings; with us in mind as the end goal? That isn’t necessarily a question we can know the answer to, but it’s something we can approach with science…

Ask Ethan: Could you have two perfectly identical snowflakes? (Synopsis)

"Lives are snowflakes - unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection.)" -Neil Gaiman When you see a snowflake, what you're seeing is a thin crystal of ice, with intricate, hexagonally-symmetric features that reveal themselves under a microscope. Although snowflakes come in a myriad of different shapes and patterns, there's one adage you've heard since you were a kid: that no two…

The Double Jet Death Of Sun-Like Stars (Synopsis)

"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed." -William James When stars like our Sun run out of fuel, they expand into red giants, start fusing helium in their cores, blow off their outermost layers very slowly, and then their insides die. They heat up even further, contract down to white dwarfs, and the intense ultraviolet light ionizes and illuminates the blown-off…

Literary Poll: Nanotechnology in Fiction?

A reader writes in with a literary query: I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined. Naturally, Stephenson's Diamond Age and Crichton's Prey come to mind. You know of other examples that would make for meaty discussion by a bunch of engineers? [...] I want to stress that most of the course will focus on technical content, so whatever work we pick has to have *some* basis…

Super Bowl XLII: Pro and Con

Pro: 1) THE GIANTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL!!!!! w00t! 2) Michael Strahan and Amani Toomer get championship rings, which is particularly sweet, because they suffered through some really awful teams. 3) Eli Manning drinks for free in the tri-state area. This'll buy him at least six months of peace and quiet from the New York press. That was one of the all-time great fourth quarters. I have no idea how he got away from that one sack, and Tyree's catch was amazing. 4) This breaks up Boston's sports hegemony for the year, which couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of fans. 5) THE GIANTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL…

How Many Anecdotes Does it Take to Make Data?

The New York Giants, who played all their starters in a "meaningless" game against the Patriots in the final week of the season are now 2-0 in the playoffs. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Indianapolis Colts, and Dallas Cowboys, who played their starters only sparingly at the end of the regular season to "rest up for the playoffs" are now 0-3. I'm pleasantly stunned by the Giants victory. Though it might be better to call it a total meltdown by the Cowboys, who committed a bunch of stupid penalties in the fourth quarter to bail out the Giants' patchwork defense and preserve the victory. Though,…

Sing the Atheist Anthem!

... so, you think can sing, eh? Well, Desiree Schell, talk show host with Q. Transmissions of Edmonton, Canada, has asked me to tell you about a contest. Q Transmissions wants YOU to sing us what is sure to be the next smash hit on the Skeptical charts... Fervent Unbeliever! ... Perform your best rendition of the song. YouTube, your blackberry, your laptop... it doesn't matter how you do it as long as we hear your lovely (or not so lovely) voice serenading us. Like this! Get all the fame and prestige that a skeptical talk-show on a community radio station can provide. And a prize! Go to Q…

So Much For The Nightly Show

We're only six episodes into The Nightly Show, the program Comedy Central put on to replace Colbert, but I'm about ready to write it off. Larry Wilmore, the show's host, was pretty funny as a correspondent for The Daily Show, so I was optimistic. But it was not to be. The basic format is this: In the first segment Wilmore does a monologue on some issue of note. In the second segment there is a discussion of the issue with four guests. In the third, the panel is asked blunt questions, and is then judged on whether or not they are keeping it real. The trouble is that the panelists, each…

Pimp Me Digital Cameras

The vast majority of the SteelyKid pictures posted here have been taken with our Canon PowerShot A95 camera, which is around five years old at this point. It's served us well, but is getting old, and has a few sub-optimal features, in particular the lag time between pushing the button and actually taking the picture-- I can't tell you how many incredibly cute baby pictures have been missed because she moved or changed expression during the shutter lag. I've got a little disposable cash at the moment, and I'm toying with the idea of getting a new camera. I'd probably look at something a little…

Get out there and party like it's MMMMMMX!

Oh, no … we've almost missed it! Now we have to make a mad scrabble for birthday hats and noisemakers and cake and ice cream. It's the big 6010th birthday for planet earth, according to Ed Darrell and Phil Plait and these guys in Austin. Hmmm. Maybe we should at least make a quick trip to the Dairy Queen. Oh, wait. I don't believe that crap. Neither do any of the people I linked to above. But some of the wacky people at World Net Daily do. But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. - making it…

On Accommodationism

Chris Mooney has an explanation of the "accommodationist" position that deserves better than to be buried in a Links Dump: I don't see a need to pry into how each individual is dealing with these complicated and personal matters of constructing a coherent worldview. Rather, from a political and public perspective, I want them all to integrate modern science into that worldview. And, from a civil libertarian perspective, I don't want their religion telling me what to do. (Especially interfering with my access to alcohol on Sundays!) Insofar as I'm an accommodationist, then, it's not because I…