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Paleontological Profiles: Michael Skrepnick

Paleo-artist Michael Skrepnick It is difficult for me to pick up a book about dinosaurs and not find some gorgeous artwork by artist Michael Skrepnick gracing the pages, if not the cover, of the book. He has created beautiful restorations of the distant past for Nature, National Geographic, Project Exploration, and many books about prehistoric life, making him one of the most hard-working and well-known paleo-illustrators around today. (For those who have been itching to see some of his new artwork, Michael has some good news for you. His website is going to be rebuilt and stocked up with…

Citizen Science: all fun and no data? ScienceOnline 2010

Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals? In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all! I'm glad to learn there are so many interesting projects and ways for people to get involved. Science is so empowering! My question today concerns things like outcomes and deliverables. We'd like to assume that good things are coming from citizen science because people are involved, but I…

Watson's genome, Venter's genome, what's the difference?

"Come quickly, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes, "I've been asked to review a mysterious sequence, whose importance I'm only now beginning to comprehend." The unidentified stranger handed Holmes a piece of paper inscribed with symbols and said it was a map of unparalleled value. Holmes gazed thoughtfully at the map, then slowly lifted his eyes and coldly surveyed his subject's beaming countenance. "You have an affinity for the ocean," said Holmes, "that you indulged to excess as a reckless youth. An experience as a medic in the military changed your life and gave you a reason to do more than…

Liveblogging the conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace

I'm sitting in panels and sessions at this great conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace which is the 7th annual conference of this kind. Here are only some of the snippets of what I've been seeing and hearing: I heard yesterday of exciting and courageous curricular attempts to integrate social justice into engineering education. I heard of a course called "Engineering and Social Justice" offered through engineering and sociology at Queen's University, a first-year course where projects were focused on social justice, year-long experiences for students in Engineers Without…

Citizen Science: all fun and no data? ScienceOnline 2010

Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals? Cross-posted at Discovering Biology in a Digital World. In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all! I'm glad to learn there are so many interesting projects and ways for people to get involved. Science is so empowering! My question today concerns things like outcomes and deliverables. We'd like to assume that good things are coming…

How the IBC number is reported

In an earlier post on the IBC I wrote: Sloboda says: We've always said our work is an undercount, you can't possibly expect that a media-based analysis will get all the deaths. Our best estimate is that we've got about half the deaths that are out there. OK, then why does the IBC page say "Iraq Body Count: Max 38661"? That's not really the maximum possible number of deaths, is it? Why not report their estimate that the true number of deaths is 70,000 or so? IBC's Josh Dougherty responded with: No. It's the maximum number of reported civilian deaths, as is stated on their homepage, counters…

Working Blue: Good, Low-Energy Sex in a Depleted World

Get nine women who have thought a lot about peak oil and climate change together around a dining room table, and perhaps expectedly, the conversation turns umm...blue. Get them around *my* dining room table and the turn to sex is pretty inevitable, given a certain native blueness (this is a polite way of saying "dirty mindness"). The absence of gents from this affair (completely unintended) made us rather uninhibited about certain subjects. And at the end of one conversation, I realized that I've got a rather gaping hole in my body of works on how to go forward into the future - I've never…

Too Many Choices Spoil the Pop Culture?

Radley Balko links to, and rightly lampoons, this silly article by Fortune writer Marc Gunther. Gunther claims that we have too many choices now, with 300 TV channels focused on particular niches. It's reduced the power of the 3 networks to present the news to a bulk of the population, it's reduced the commonality of our shared experiences (since we no longer all watch the same thing, we don't talk about it around the water cooler), and it's "fragmented" our society. Is he joking? One would hope so. Are we really supposed to lament the fact that we can now buy and watch what we actually want…

Monkey Girl

If there's one good thing about spending an extra night in Buffalo, without access to a computer and with a rather limited selection of channels on the television, it's that you get a lot of reading done. I managed to plow through all of Edward Humes' book Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul. It's mostly a blow-by-blow account of the big Kitzmiller v. Dover case. It also provides a fair amount of historical context. Overall it's an excellent book, difficult to put down. The trial scenes are especially compelling. I was following the trial…

Cancer is a disease

Barbara Ehrenreich had breast cancer, and ugly and frightening as that disease is, she found something else that was almost as horrible: the 'positive thinking' approach to health care. People are stigmatized if they fail to regard their illness as anything other than an uplifting, positive life experience, an opportunity to examine their lives and identify what is most important to them…and also, most disturbingly, if they fail to appreciate that the attitude that they bring to the problem will determine whether they live or die. It's the Oprah-zation of medicine. In the most extreme…

Reading Diary: It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes by Jennifer Gardy and Josh Holinaty

I have some theories about both children's books and about science-themed graphic works. There are basically two kinds of children's books: those that are designed to please children versus those that are designed to attract the adults that buy most children's books. There are also basically two kinds of science-themed graphic works: those that are essentially regular information dump-style textbooks that mix in some funny pictures and light-hearted banter as kind of a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down and those that truly take advantage of the strengths of the graphic medium to…

Astroturfing to Protect Astroturf

By Liz Borkowski  Thereâs an article making its way around the internet warning that a lobbying reform law currently in the Senate will require bloggers who criticize Congress and reach audiences of more than 500 to register and file quarterly reports with Congress -- or risk jail time. Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority decided to investigate this, and found no such provision in the bill. In fact, he cites passages of the bill stating that it covers paid attempts to stir up the public on behalf of a client. Sums above $25,000 also need to be involved. In fact, this piece of the…

Some People's Trash, Other People's Missing Million Dollar Masterpieces

tags: art, Rufino Tamayo, Tres Personajes, discarded masterpiece "Tres Personajes" (1970) by Mexican artist, Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991). Oil on canvas with marble dust and sand worked into the paint. Image: Sotheby's [slightly larger view]. I am one of those people who pokes through other people's garbage in search of treasures. This isn't difficult to do in Manhattan because people conveniently discard their trash on the sidewalk, where garbage men come to pick it up at some point during the day. My favorite place to look through trash is on Manhattan's Upper West Side (UWS) because the…

The more you know: Study finds calorie signs do influence sugary beverage purchases among youth

In ongoing public health efforts to curb the obesity epidemic, better menu and nutrition labeling is often tapped as a low-cost way to help make the healthy choice, the easy choice. And while the evidence on the effectiveness of such interventions is still emerging, a recent study found that educating young people on the calories in sugar-sweetened beverages did make a positive difference. Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study focused on an experiment inside six corner stores located near middle and high schools within low-income, predominantly…

As the Poker Game Turns

The guys have decided, for the time being at least, to change the format of our weekly game. Instead of a cash game, they want to have a series of single table tournaments for $20 each. They figure we can do 3 a week, that way no one can lose more than $60 and it will attract more people. The reasoning is astonishingly stupid. They say the game has "gotten out of hand" because there are 2 or 3 players who come to the game with hundreds of dollars and they bet like crazy, so you can lose too much money. They say that by doing a tournament format, everyone starts the same so it's more fair.…

Popular Media Should Do Science

Lest you think I'm transforming the entire site into cute-baby-pictures-dot-com, let me reassure you that while the posting frequency may drop off a bit, Uncertain Principles will always be your go-to site for slightly ranty blogging about issues of science and larger culture. Well, one of them, anyway. This is brought to you by a recent post at Physics and Physicists, in which ZapperZ takes issue with the New York Times. The Times wrote a silly piece on radioactive granite countertops a while back, which the Health Physics Society responded to, prompting ZapperZ to write: When will these…

Pocket Knives, Snow Globes, and National Security

I've noticed, of myself, lately, that I never have a knife or a bottle opener handy, but I was once the guy who always had a knife or a bottle opener handy. That is generally true of archaeologists, and I used to be a full time archaeologist. Originally, I assumed that my lack of preparedness came down to that .... my ever increasing distance with involvement in archeology. But now, I realize this is not the case. It really is more a matter of National Security. There is a link between the pocket, the belt-slung case or holster, the kit bag, and the backpack. They are all places where…

The Art and Science of Naming Things

We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein's Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts. One of the differences he mentioned was the way the different disciplines handle names. He claimed that science is deeply concerned with naming things, because naming a thing in some sense defines it-- the word "electron" carries with it a whole host of properties that are shared by all electrons in the universe. In the arts, on…

Are Health, Technology and Science Spending Effective as Short-Term Stimulus?

Health-infrastructure, information technology, and science research spending are clearly related to the success of our economy. They represent investments into intellectual property and human capital that increase productivity and create long-term growth. For this reason, I don't object to the government spending money on them as a matter of policy. But Gary Becker makes an interesting point with respect to the economic stimulus package. While such spending may be important for long-term growth, it's effectiveness as a short-term growth measure may be limited: The stimulus package's plans…

Pycnogenol brand pine bark extract for ADHD: hope or hype?

Get ready to be barraged by news of a proprietary pine bark extract exhibiting efficacy against attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Today's report by the French company that manufactures a maritime pine bark extract seems to be associated (see press release below fold) with Dr Steven Lamm, a clinical assistant professor at NYU Medical School, and based on results published in the journal, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. I don't believe this is actually "news" as stories such as this one appeared about a month ago. Hence, I fear that today's press release and satellite hook…

Who knew? Mike Adams and I share a problem

Forgive me if I'm feeling a little schadenfreude right now. My current blog location has been criticized in the past for a variety of things, including, most recently, Pepsigate. One of the things that we've been criticized for is our on-again off-again use of Google Adsense, where the content of the page dictates which ads pop up. For skeptical blogs, this sometimes has some rather embarrassing consequences. For instance, when I write about vaccines, sometimes the ad server would serve up ads for chelation therapy or anti-vaccine quack nostrums. Ditto when I wrote about homeopathy, which…

Gratuitous Gripes

Warning: as the title suggests, this is just one long whine. It probably shouldn’t be read by anyone. For my own sake, I’m putting it out there, anyways. Proceed with caution! So much for posting something every day. When I promised that, it sounded feasible. Then again, when I called my remodel "almost done", I think I was mistaking it for "done." This seems to be a new habit of mine... setting my expectations too high. Or maybe it is an old habit, resurfacing. Whatever the case, I had planned to have my life back to (what could pass for) normal by the end of last week. Instead, I still…

Non-science entry

Just an update for those who know me. This past week has been a little crazy. We just bought our first car (my wife needs it for her new job). Having lived close to 10 years in Manhattan and then downtown Boston, we never really needed a car and probably saved quite a bit by never owning one. But I guess it was inevitable. So what did we buy? At first we checked out Craig's List. You can find superb deals there, however the condition and state of the car + reliability of the seller is always in doubt. A friend of mine went through the car listings on Craig's List, only to find out that many…

Hedge Fund Fraud

I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy: A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor. But the 17th floor was Bernie Madoff's sanctum, occupied by fewer than two dozen staff members and rarely visited by other employees. It was called the "hedge fund" floor, but federal prosecutors now say the work Mr. Madoff did there was actually a fraud scheme whose losses Mr. Madoff himself estimates at $50…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Edwards blogger dust-up

The far right smear machine against John Edwards has moved into territory close to home: attacking Edwards by attacking his newly hired bloggers, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon fame) and Melissa McEwan (from the equally eminent Shakespeare's Sister). The big media (cable news of all stripes, AP and New York Times) are reporting it just as it comes off the far right tickertape, as usual. It's not an accident that Amanda and Melissa are noted and notable progressive feminist bloggers. Not an accident unless you believe in the tooth fairy, anyway. Why is in the Sermonette? Because the thin end of…

What Can Dolphins Tell Us About The Evolution of Friendship?

Scientists thought they had a pretty good handle on the social interactions of bottlenose dophins (Tursiops). They've used the term fission-fusion dynamics to describe dolphin (and non-human primate) society and so far it has served researchers well. Fission-fusion societies among dolphins are characterized by two levels of social hierarchy: groups of two or three related males ("first-order alliances") which work together to guard one or more females from other males, and larger teams comprised of multiple related first-order alliances ("second-order alliances") which cooperate to "steal"…

Eyjafjallajökull eruption update for 4/17/2010

The eruptive plume from Eyjafjallajökull taken Holsvelli webcam. Image courtesy of Mattias Larsson. Sorry to disappoint everyone visiting to blog while they sit at any number of airports around the world, but the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull appears to still be going strong. The Icelandic Met Office is heading up to the volcano to conduct a survey of the crater area to find out (1) what it looks like and (2) how much new water (i.e., ice) is there available for the erupting magma. More water is likely to mean more explosive eruptions in this phreatoplinian style - however, like I…

Bloggers vs. Journalists Redux, part N

Some guy named Mulshine, who is apparently an ancient journalist (remember: generation is mindset, not age), penned one of those idiotic pieces for Wall Street Journal, willingly exposing his out-datedness and blindness to the world - read it yourself and chuckle: All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper: This highlights the real flaw in the thinking of those who herald the era of citizen journalism. They assume newspapers are going out of business because we aren't doing what we in fact do amazingly well, which is to quickly analyze and report on complex public issues. The real reason they…

On the Media - your weekend reading (instead of the hardcopy NYT you are not subscribed to anyway)

Actually, Journalists do take some of the blame for the death of newspapers: But why is the business model dying? Competition is a factor, and blogs are obviously part of that mix. But again, if I'd started a business and someone else opened up down the street and offered a more appealing product, and I lost customers, would it be fair to blame the other guy alone for my problems? In a free market, we have competition. Yes, it can suck when you're not on the winning side. But there's nothing saying that you can't start a new business, or reform your existing one to compete. Newspapers remain…

Pink, pink everywhere. Let's get past breast cancer awareness to prevention

First it was the balloon at the grocery store in the shape of a pink ribbon, and the front page of the newspaper printed on pink paper. Then it was the specially-designed package of pink lipstick, and the NFL players decked out with shocking pink shoes, socks, and sweat towel. It's "Breast Cancer Awareness Month," and it’s pink, pink everywhere. Others have been writing this month about pink-washing. That’s the phrase describing firms and organizations which sell products and host events to make the public think they are contributing in a meaningful way to the breast-cancer cause. (This week’…

Medical professionalism, or WE ARE YOUR GODS, BOW BEFORE US

One of our sciblings, Dr. Signout, is learning the ropes as she struggles (and presumably excels) through her medical residency. As her writing has picked back up, she has brought up some important questions about medical education and medical professionalism. I'm a little further along in my career than she, and I have some thoughts that may flesh out her experiences, and shed some light on the medical profession as a whole. Her latest posts brought up two particularly important issues, one about how doctors are treated "without the white coat" and the other on what it means to put…

Big Tobacco's Tactics in Nigeria

Four Nigerian states are suing British American Tobacco and Philip Morris to recover costs of treating smoking-related diseases. The plaintiffs charge that the companies aimed to recruit more smokers by targeting minors, using sponsorship of concerts and sporting events and free cigarette giveaways. Tosin Sulaiman in The Times (UK) reports: The biggest increase in smoking in Nigeria has been among young people. The number of young women smokers grew tenfold between 1990 and 2001, according to the World Health Organisation.   A large part of the plaintiffsâ evidence will come from the…

Walmart Goes Gay

Walmart has decided to join the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, in an obvious attempt to sell products to a group of people with significant disposable income. The result, predictably, is a major freakout by the religious right. Now I know, we hear from conservatives all the time about free markets and capitalism, but you don't think they actualy mean it, do you? Also predictably, the Worldnutdaily is leading the chorus of outrage. This article contains lots of ridiculous statements, but it begins by describing what's going on: "It is correct that we have a dialogue with the (…

New Star Wars Film: The Recompense

Bounty hunter Jahdo Kyn intends to start a new life, but in order to leave his troubled past behind he has to buy himself a new future. He has a plan, but as his plan develops he discovers a dilemma, one that requires him to make choices he is not well-prepared to make. This is what happens when you have the kind of past Jahdo Kyn has made for himself. The Recompense concept art: Analiese Miller as Aisha Lefu. The beautiful and deadly Aisha Lefu is part of that past. And she’s not the only individual that will make Jahdo Kyn wish he hadn’t gotten out of bed that one morning, a long time…

Ah, Carbon Capture; we hardly knew ye

Jim Hansen wants to see all coal-fired plants shut down by 2030. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Al Gore wants to see the United States generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2018, which means shutting down all the coal-fired plants. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Princeton University's Pacala and Socolow of the "wedge" strategy make CCS an integral part of their future clean energy portfolio. Everybody who's crunched the emissions numbers pretty much agrees that coal has got to go. Unless we can capture…

Summary Judgment in the California Creationist Case: The Lawyers for the Creationists Argue Like Creationists (Part 2 of 3)

(This is Part 2 of a three part post on Friday's summary judgment ruling in the ACSI v. Stearns creationism lawsuit. Part 1 is here; Part 3 will be up later today.) If you read Judge Otero's ruling on the summary judgment motions in the California Creationist Case, you'll see that he discovered something that most of us already know: if you're looking for dubious argument tactics, you'll almost always find them when you're reading things written by professional creationists. In the case of the California lawsuit, the Christian schools are being represented by the law firm of Wendell Bird.…

The Delicate Sensibilities of Teenage Girls

How do you effectively encourage young girls to stick with their math, science, and computer studies in high school? How do you effectively encourage them to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics? There's no one perfect approach; you need a full toolkit that allows you to mend all the malfunctions and rip down all the roadblocks that gender roles, peer pressures, familial or societal expectations, and poor or misguided teachers can throw at a girl. The editors of and contributors to She's Such A Geek! thought one good tool to have in the arsenal would be an…

Mayors, Governors, Scary Gay People and ... what? Threesomes????

Sometimes the items falling into my in-box are totally random and unconnected. Sometimes they fit together very nicely. Then, there are the times they fit together in a random and unconnected sort of way. I moved to Boston, from Upstate New York, when the Governor was a King. I only vaguely remember who the mayor was, but there was another King running for that office ... Mel King, an African American activist and against him, Ray Flynn, a home boy Irish politician. Sorry about the Ethnic Labels, but this is, after all Saint Patrick's day, and by the time I'm done with this post you'll see…

Simon Singh appeals Judge Eady's bogus libel ruling

Back in May many of us in the skeptical blogosphere were alarmed to learn of what British law blogger Jack of Kent termed "an astonishingly illiberal ruling" by Sir David Eady against science writer Simon Singh. Eady was the judge presiding over another bit of legal thuggery by practitioners whose feelings were hurt when Simon Singh called them out in print for their 'promotion of chiropractic to treat all sorts of conditions for which it is utterly useless, referring to the British Chiropractic Association as promoting "bogus" remedies. When I wrote about this case nearly a month ago, I…

If you think it's just about mercury when it comes to vaccines, you're wrong

Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on July 20, 2005. This one seems downright prescient as I read it again. Enjoy! Today in Washington, there will be a march, called (with unintentional irony) the Power of Truth march. Its organizers claim that it will be to "protest the use of mercury in vaccines" (never mind that the mercury was taken out of nearly all vaccines in the U.S…

10,000 B.C.: To MST3000 or Not to MST3000

One of the guilty pleasures of my sabbatical from the dark halls of Pharma-dur is the freedom to take in a movie on a weekday afternoon. There's just something special about sitting in a theater of the local googolplex with maybe three to ten other people and watching a new release on the big silver screen. It's like my own semi-private showing, and I can make believe that I am a dowdy suburban semi-literate version of the late Pauline Kael. Among the flicks I've taken in as afternoon delights: No Country for Old Men (saw it twice - I'm a combined Cormac McCarthy/Coen Brothers fan), There…

Nisbet to Myers, Dawkins: "Shut yer traps!"

Where there's one, there's the other. The pair behind the infamous "framing" concept are back, and this time they're telling scientists to shut up, perhaps taking up the axiom of "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nice?" More specifically, in a recent blog post Matt Nisbet admonished PZ and Richard Dawkins for their particular views about the conflict between science & religion as they appear in the creationist propaganda piece Expelled. Quote Nisbet; As long as Dawkins and PZ continue to be the representative voices from the pro-science side in this debate, it is really bad for those…

Energy and charging an electric motorcycle

I just realized that something has been bothering me. It is this KillaCycle - the electric zoom-fast motorcycle that I posted about previously. It clearly is super fast. However there are two claims that seem iffy. It can be recharged in 4 minutes. It is recharged by wind power. It may be possible that these individually could be true - but could it be recharged in 4 minutes by the wind? I am not sure. Let me do some estimations to see if this is possible. What am I starting with: From the review on gas2.org, uses cordless drill batteries. Uses 1200 batteries Produces 500 bhp - not…

In Oakland, Who Pays the Shipping Costs?

By Liz Borkowski  In the latest issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Joseph Plaster explores how the system for trucking imported goods from the Port of Oakland keeps both truckers and residents struggling. Truckers scrape by on meager earnings and can only afford the oldest, most polluting vehicles; pollution from hundreds of dirty trucks idling for hours each day spells health problems for truckers and those living nearby. A coalition of labor, environmental, and community groups has proposed changes that would improve truckersâ situation and clear the air. The companies who contract…

Where do you want scientists to learn ethics?

Because I am engaged in a struggle with mass quantities of grading, I'm reviving a post from the vault to tide you over. I have added some new details in square brackets, and as always, I welcome your insight here. I just got back [in Octiber of 2005] from talking with an outside evaluator about the federally funded training grant project at my university that tries to get more of our students to graduate school in science. The evaluator is here not at the behest of the funding agency, but rather at the request of the science professor here who oversees the program. Because, you know, he…

Thinker. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

After yesterday's detailed analysis of a study that's being touted far and wide as "evidence" that vitamin C cures cancer, I thought I deserved a bit of a break. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to take the day off from blogging. (Obviously, as you're reading this now.) It does mean that I plan on doing a bit of slumming, though, and what better place to slum than on some of the antivaccine crank blogs? Besides, it's almost as though they want me to apply a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to their material, given that they've put up posts that provide such ready insight into how…

The American Academy of Pediatrics versus antivaccinationist hypocrisy

Three weeks ago, I wrote about some truly irresponsible antivaccination propaganda masquerading as entertainment that aired in the form of a television show called Eli Stone. This show, which portrayed its hero taking on the case of an autistic boy whose mother blamed his autism on thimerosal (going under the fictional name "mercuritol") in vaccines and scoring a $5.2 million settlement in the process. One consequence of this show was that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was shaken out of its inaction enough to draft a letter protesting the show and urging its cancellation of the…

Just in time for Christmas: a virgin birth!

Her name is Flora and she is a single parent. Born in Miami, Flora moved to Chester, UK, as a toddler. Now, she's almost 8 years old and starting a family, all on her own. Literally. Four eggs have hatched and another eight are ready to go. Yet, Flora has never gotten cozy with another male dragon. How did Flora accomplish this feat and how do we know that she's not just good at keeping secrets? Flora's not the only one Parthenogenesis -- reproduction without the need for fertilization by a male -- has been observed before in about 70 vertebrate species, including snakes and monitor…

That School Prayer Banner in Cranston

By now I'm sure we are all familiar with the Jessica Ahlquist case in Cranston, RI. The New York Times provides a helpful summary: She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer's presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding…

A Discovery That Will Change Everything (!!!) ... Or Not

Late last week I received a rather curious e-mail. It read; WORLD RENOWNED SCIENTISTS REVEAL A REVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIFIC FIND THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING Ground-Breaking Global Announcement What: An international press conference to unveil a major historic scientific find. After two years of research a team of world-renowned scientists will announce their findings, which address a long-standing scientific puzzle. The find is lauded as the most significant scientific discovery of recent times. History brings this momentous find to America and will follow with the premiere of a major television…