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More Penis Pump Mischief

From Slovakia: A Slovak driver who crashed into a bus shocked rescuers who found him unconscious and half naked with a vacuum pump on his penis. Police said the 42-year-old man, driving an old Citroen in the Slovak town of Levice, had ignored a "give way" sign. "It's very likely he had auto-sex while driving, it is a matter of investigation. After the accident he was found lying in the seat, his pants were off and it (the pump) was placed on his penis," police officer Peter Polak told Reuters. If only he could get extradited to Oklahoma...

Appeals Court Upholds Student Free Speech

The court of appeals for the 2nd circuit ruled in favor of a student who wore a t-shirt calling President Bush the "Chicken Hawk in Chief" and including pictures of Bush with lines of cocaine on a mirror and a martini in his hand. After a complaint from another student, the school told the student he had to cover up parts of the shirt. He filed suit and the district court ruled that the school had violated his first amendment rights, but that they could still censor parts of the shirt. The appeals court overturned that decision and ruled in the student's favor.

Welcome, Josh Rosenau

ScienceBlogs continues to be the New York Yankees of the blogging world, scooping up every great science blogger in the world (though we're still waiting for one of those $20 million contracts to come around). The latest acquisition is Thoughts from Kansas, Josh Rosenau's excellent blog that focuses on evolution and, in particular, on Kansas. Josh will make an excellent addition to the lineup. So welcome, Josh. A couple tips to help you get along here: don't leave a mess around your locker or Katherine will yell at you. And don't bother Tim with technical problems until he's had his coffee…

Stunning Church/State Case

If even 10% of the allegations in this case are correct, it's one of the most outrageous cases I've ever seen. The Indian River School District in Delaware is accused by a Jewish family of pushing Christianity so agressively and viciously that the family has moved to Wilmington because they feared reprisals from the town after filing the suit. It's the story of a Jewish family, the only one in an enormous school district, essentially being tormented. Read it for yourself. I want to follow this case in court, because if the facts support those allegations that's absolutely stunning.

Jeffrey Ross Roasts Pamela Anderson

Okay, I am officially in love with whoever came up with the concept of Youtube. This absolutely rocks. I did a review a few weeks ago of the Pamela Anderson roast DVD and youtube has the uncensored clip of Jeffrey Ross - the undisputed king of the roasts - at that roast. This you have to see. Warning: this you have to see if you have a dark and sick sense of humor and are not easily offended. It's rude, it's crude and it's very, very funny. Oh, and while we're at it, here's Nick DiPaolo's set from the Pamela Anderson roast.

The Texas Taliban?

From the first day of the state Republican convention in Texas: At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, party leader Tina Benkiser assured them that God was watching over the two-day confab. "He is the chairman of this party," she said against a backdrop of flags and a GOP seal with its red, white and blue logo. The party platform, adopted Saturday, declares "America is a Christian nation" and affirms that "God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom." Change "Christian" to "Muslim" and it sounds a lot like what a religious party in Pakistan might say, doesn't it?

Paglia? I don't think so…

This has been the week that the whiny little twits have risen up to complain about atheism. The latest entry is from Camille Paglia, and many have written to me about it. I'm not going to bother. I've never cared much for Paglia, and Salon's infatuation with her as a columnist is incomprehensible to me — her specialty is haughty pseudo-intellectual blurts of pretension, strung together on the one common thread of her febrile narcissism. So, sorry, no evisceration of her babblings — there have just been too many of them lately, so all she gets is a curt dismissal.

Schism!

In case you'd been wondering why Scientology is such a silly crock, you should know — it wasn't. Before it was corrupted by the people running the show, Lafayette Ron Hubbard's technology and philosophy actually worked. We just need to return to the primal purity of the original Scientology vision. And that's why Freezone has split from the Church of Scientology™, and proudly displays a picture of a goofy fathead in a nautical cap on their web page. It's going to be interesting to see how the fascist goons of the Church of Scientology™ deal with heresy. If it cuts into their profits,…

Slow and steady

I remember old sci-fi stories, where the colony ship would take generations to turn up in a new system, they'd take a brief look from orbit, land, and get overwhelmed by monsters / bacteria / natives / whatever exciting thing the author had thought up. And the obvious question was always: well, why didn't they spend a bit longer checking everything was all right? And the answer of course was that would make the story too boring. But the contrast with Curiosity is fun. BA reports that because they've seen one odd little thing, everything is on hold until they've figured it out.

Sea ice pic

I used to like the IJIS sea ice pic for comparing this year's progress. And them AMSR went down (I hope I've got that right, I really wasn't paying attention) and they stopped updating. But C points me to which, while not so pretty, is a good substitute. That comes from http://gfspl.rootnode.net/index.php/arcticiceart which has others. This post was mostly for me to link to the pic for my own convenience. But we could also look at it... too early to tell, but we seem to be bumping along at the bottom of the range at the moment. Time will tell.

Pope springs eternal

mt has been writing about religion and I even got Paul to comment. I'm going to do my take in a bit, but in the meantime a bit from Nude Scientist caught my eye: Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. [1]. Yes, that is right: apparently we're supposed to take His Holiness seriously as an authority on climate change. So the question must be, Was he speaking infallibly at that point?. [Update: I'm cr*p. See the comments :-) -W]

Back to the river

First outing this year, on a day that fitted the description of english weather "all four seasons in a day". Happily that included summer, since I was down to shorts and a tee-shirt in the sunshine portion. We couldn't scrounge up eight people so went out in the IV of doom, which isn't nearly as bad as it sounds, just a bit hard to sit. And... it was fun. And we sat it, sometimes. And we even went back to do an extra reach because it was fun. Even when I got a blister in my palm from being on the wrong side.

"Double Whammy" from Climate Crocks

Climate Crocks has a new video out about Sandy and the unusual weather patterns that allowed its formation.     Good stuff! All the pundit chatter and the Bloomberg news coming out on the side of reality does give one hope that from the ashes of Battery Point climate change mitigation policy might rise.  I do however recall the same attention and promise after the Hurricane Katrina debacle, and well, we all know how far that got us. Hope springs eternal, but also "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..." Who thinks Sandy and its warning will stick?  

059/366: Pure Evil

You might look at this and say "Oh, what a cute little squirrel..." A demon from another dimension, at least according to Emmy. But Emmy will be very happy to explain, loudly and at length, that this is, in fact, a demonic alien menace, an existential threat to the safety of our house and home. This wasn't really what I had in mind for the photo of the day today, but I took a picture of this little guy while I was outside trying to get a different sort of shot that didn't quite come out the way I wanted. So this is what you get tonight.

055/366: Take Off

You didn't get a photo of the day yesterday because this was my day: Southern California at sunrise, from the air. I spent about seven hours on planes, starting before the sun was up in California, to say nothing of the time spent in airports. I had the good camera with me, so I got some cool photos out the plane window, but when I finally got home, I didn't have the time or energy to GIMP them up and post one. So, instead, I'm doing it just before sunrise on the East Coast, before I walk Emmy and wake up Kate and the kids...

The Schrödinger Sessions: Now Accepting Applications

I've updated the detailed blog post describing our summer workshop introducing writers to quantum physics to include a link to the application form. For the benefit of those who read via RSS, though, and don't follow me on Twitter: the application form is now live, and will be for the next few weeks. We expect to make acceptance decisions around April 1. So, if you make up stories and the idea of spending a few days at the Joint Quantum Institute learning about quantum physics from some of the world's leading experts sounds like fun, well, send us an application.

Can we hope the poll is just wrong?

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll probably is valid, unfortunately — it's not far off from my impressions. 44% of Americans think evolution is probably or definitely false, and two thirds think a god created human beings in the last ten thousand years. Those two numbers don't quite fit together well — those who think a god created humans recently should also consider evolution false — but we can safely say that about half the country is ignorant or deluded about science, anyway. We will now, of course, all close our eyes and pretend that religion has nothing at all to do with this catastrophic…

A partial history of the turkey (Podcast)

"As Thanksgiving ebbs into memory and Christmas looms on the horizon, Eat This Podcast concerns itself with the turkey. For a nomenclature nerd, the turkey is a wonderful bird. Why would a bird from America be named after a country on the edge of Asia? The Latin name offers a clue; the American turkey is Meleagris gallopavo, while the African guineafowl is Numida meleagris. But why did the first settlers adopt a name they were already familiar with, rather than adopt a local indigenous name such as nalaaohki pileewa for the native fowl. Simple answer: nobody knows..." Listen to the podcast (…

New Elements for the Periodic Table

Four elements are being added to the Periodic Table of the Elements. (I'm going to need a new shower curtain). These elements have been "known" for a long time, but are only now being added for reasons explained in the video below. Meanwhile, have you read The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into The Land Of The Chemical Elements, or The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements? Great books. Not current, but then again, the Periodic Table has been around for quite a while. And now the video:

Ethan on the Radio Tonight!

Tonight, from 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Pacific Time, I will be Dr. David Livingston's guest on his radio program, The Space Show! I have no idea how it's going to go or if I'll be able to communicate clearly on an audio-only format, as I've never tried before, but I'm really looking forward to the experience. You can listen live via internet radio by going to http://www.thespaceshow.com/live.htm at the appropriate time, or by heading to the RSS feed afterwards and downloading the episode. Don't forget to leave your comments if you listen to it!

Buttars' Bill Goes Down

No, not the bill on gay straight clubs, though that would make the metaphor in the title of this post much funnier. His anti-evolution bill has been rejected by the Utah state legislature: The Utah House of Representatives voted 46-28 to kill SB96, which cast doubt on the teaching of evolution. "There are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape. I didn't," said Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who sponsored the bill. He said it was "doubtful" that he would try a similar bill in the future. Well, that's a relief.

Welcome Daily Kos Readers

Last weekend I participated in an interview via email with DarkSyde, a front page contributor at DailyKos. That interview has just been posted, promising to bring a slew of new folks over here (my last link from there led to a quadrupling of my normal daily hits). So for my regular readers, you might wanna head over there to read the interview. And for all the new DailyKos folks who've not been here before, welcome. This blog is nearly 3 years old, but just moved here a few days ago. To see my previous work, check out my old blog. And thanks for coming.

Comedy Writer Wants Bork on Court

Ned Rice, who is billed as a staff writer for the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (who?), has a piece in the National Review, in which he claims to be entirely serious, urging Bush to withdraw the Miers nomination and replace her with Robert Bork, who was already shot down in 1987. In the process, he peddles the tried and true false line that Bork was undermined by lies from the left to paint him as a radical. That is nonsense. Bork is a radical. If anything, the confirmation hearings only began to scratch the surface of just how dangerous he would be on the court.

Although the idea of living in sin with my wife is deliciously tempting…

Here's a curious poll: "If marriage is a sacred institution authored by God, should atheists be barred from marrying?" One answer is sweeping the vote (and I don't think sending the Pharynguloid horde over there will change the trend), but Austin is making an interesting point. If gay people can't marry because their union violates some religious requirement, then shouldn't atheist marriages also be invalid? It seems to me that if you are arguing that marriage is a divine sacrament — and obviously, I don't think it is — then a consistent fundamentalist ought to be arguing for the denial of…

Reproductive Rights: FtBConcience On Line Conference Session

This was one of the many great panels at FtBConscience, this panel hosted by Miri of Brute Reason and organized by Biodork. A panel of reproductive rights activists come together to discuss access to abortion in current events , clinic escorting and some common religious and non-religious arguments against abortion. Our panel consists of clinic escorts - including one panelist who volunteered before FACE laws went into effect (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), health care professionals, an author and several bloggers who write about reproductive rights. Our panelists hail from…

Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

We recently discussed news from the EU on banning neonicotinoid pesticides in order to stem the so called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) among honey bees. Bug Girl has an important guest post on the phenomenon of CCD by bee expert Doug Yanega. This is a must read not only for those interested in bees and CCD, but skepticism and science reporting in general, as Yanega places the current discussion in a strong historical context and provides a valuable critique of much of the reporting on CCD. Go read Honey bees, CCD, and the Elephant in the Room. ______________ Photo Credit: wildxplorer via…

The Hermit of Maine

Maine is my favorite state. If you've not visited then your life is an empty shell and you don't even know it. But it is also true that I've seen and heard some of the strangest things I've ever encountered there. So strange I can't even tell you about it. The story that recently emerge from the Pine Tree State, about a man who became a hermit nearly 30 years ago, is not as strange as all of that, but you will enjoy it: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy I hear he's a very good prisoner.

Climategate investigation ends

Climate gate involved the criminal theft of computer based data from University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers by global warming deniers. According to Julian Gregory ,Detective chief superintendent, "the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack" and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with UEA was involved in the crime." However, the criminal perpetrator, we assume a member of the global warming denialist community, was not discovered and the statute of limitations for this particular criminal act runs out in…

Almost three in four of Americans polled accept recent global warming

Almost three in four of Americans accept recent global warming, according to a new poll conducted for the Washington Post and Stanford University — but only three in ten agree that it is mainly due to human activity. Asked "Do you think that the world's temperature probably has been going up ["slowly" was used with half of the sample] over the past 100 years, or do you think this probably has not been happening?" 73% of respondents said yes, 25% of respondents said no, and 2% indicated that they didn't know or refused to answer. That's from the NCSE Here's the study (PDF)

Did you hear that big giant meteor?

Who says that if you scream in space no one will hear you? A rare daytime meteor was seen and heard streaking over northern Nevada and parts of California on Sunday, just after the peak of an annual meteor shower. Observers in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada reported seeing a fireball at about 8 a.m. local time, accompanied or followed by a thunderous clap that experts said could have been a sonic boom from the meteor or the sound of it breaking up high over the Earth. source Here's an animation: And now, a bonus question: Why do they call Sparks "Sparks"?

Space Buckyballs

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos. Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth,…

Evolution and Politics: November 13th

Skeptically Speaking: This week, we're looking at what happens when a bedrock scientific theory goes up for debate in the contentious realm of politics. We'll speak to Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, and Steven Newton, Programs and Policy Director, at the National Center for Science Education, about evolution as a political issue. And on the podcast, anthropologist and blogger Greg Laden analyzes the fallout from the so-called "climategate" emails. We record live with Eugenie Scott and Steven Newton on Sunday, November 13 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT…

NASA Study of Clays Suggests Watery Mars Underground

PASADENA, Calif. -- A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet's surface. A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes. These episodes occurred toward the end of a period of hundreds of millions of years during which warm water interacted with subsurface rocks. This has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how…

Jen Hancock on Atheists Talk

Scott Lohman will be talking to Jen Hancock, the author of Handy Humanism Handbook. Jen blogs at Happiness Through Humanism. She is an author, blogger and humanist activist. Her website is at Jen-Hancock.com. Scott is the president of the Humanists of Minnesota. Atheists Talk is produced with funding from the Minnesota Atheists, the Humanists of Minnesota, and the generous support of our members and donors. We also wish to thank Q. Cumbers restaurant for purchasing on-air advertising and for providing a great place to eat and gather. Details here. Next week, I'll be interviewing Don…

Stephan Lewandowsky AMA on Reddit

Stephan is a cognitive scientist who has done a lot of important work related to climate change. He's doing a reddit "Ask Me Anything" on Monday, April 14th from 7:30AM EST onwards. Which, conveniently for him, is 7:30PM in Australia, if I have my time zones right. There are two topics he mentioned to me that he'd like to address, which I will describe to you by citing blog posts: The climate change uncertainty monster – more uncertainty means more urgency to tackle global warming -and- In Who's Hands is the Future? But this is an AMA so I suppose you can ask him anything.

2036 and Climate Change

After 16 minutes, Michael Mann on climate change, climate sensitivity, etc. Why does Joan of Arc Being look so worried? The fire hasn't even touched her! Mann uses the analogy of a person jumping (or being thrown?) off a tall building, and as he passes the third floor notes that everything is fine. Another analogy that might be helpful is being burned at the stake. After they tie you to the stake and pile up the wood, you're fine. Then they light the wood on fire and you're still fine. For a while. The climate sensitivity graph above is from here.

Evolutionary Psychology is Nothing Gnu

Despite tens or hundreds of thousands of years of very strong Natural Selection, wildebeest do not arrive at the Mara River with a genetically determined brain mechanism or module that helps (much) to keep them from being eaten by the crocodiles that live in the river. Most of the wildebeest that try to cross the Mara in the annual migration have never seen a croc, or a river, before in their lives, or have encountered this situation only once. This would be a very good situation in which to evolved such a mechanism. Where is evolutionary psychology when you really need it?

"...boys are innately better at math and science than girls..."

Sheril Kirshenbaum has a few comments about a piece in Science addressing innate differences between boys and girls in math. I have to say, it may be hard to accept the scientific truth sometimes, but the research really does consistently say the same thing again and again. In this latest study, the science ... [doesn't] rule out the existence of very small biological difference, but, by comparing test scores across cultures, [does] indict local social factors as the likely primary culprit. Gender gaps vary from place to place, showing that cultural factors swamp biological ones. Read about…

Roy Zimmerman keeps writing those songs

As a fan of Roy Zimmerman — I've mentioned his Creation Science 101 before, among other lovely songs about the modern world — I have two revelations for you. If you're a guitar player, he has released a short clip that is a tutorial on how to play Creation Science 101. There are fingerings and keys and chords and things that lost me. If you aren't a guitar player (like me!) you can still enjoy the wisecracks. Secondly, he has a new YouTube video titled "Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual". Watch out, it's a little bit risque — he rhymes "schism" with … well, it's obvious from the subject…

Global Warming Slow Down?

Over the last decade the surface temperatures of the earth have increased. During the previous decades, the surface temperatures of the earth increased at a somewhat higher rate. Meanwhile, over the last decade there seems to be some extra heat gain in the deeper ocean. Also, some of the surface heat is busy melting the planet's glaciers and the Arctic Sea ice. That heat does not contribute to the surface heat measurement. So, global warming has not slowed down. This is what we know. Here is a nice video that explains some of this from the Yale Climate Forum, made by Peter Sinclair.

Acorn Killers Target NPR

The video comes from Project Veritas, and is another in political activist James O'Keefe's undercover exposes (he most prominently took on ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). In the video, Schiller and NPR institutional giving director Betsy Liley are at lunch in Washington with two Project Veritas "investigative reporters" identified as Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar, who posed as "Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik." They were allegedly interested in having their organization donate $5 million to NPR. O'Keefe's organization says the recording was made on Feb.…

Antievolution bill in New Mexico tabled

House Bill 302 was tabled by the Education Committee of the New Mexico House of Representatives on a 5-4 vote on February 18, 2011, suggesting that it is unlikely to come to a floor vote before the legislature adjourns on March 19, 2011. A version of the currently popular "academic freedom" antievolution strategy, HB 302, if enacted, would require teachers to be allowed to inform students "about relevant scientific information regarding either the scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses" pertaining to "controversial" scientific topics and would protect teachers from "reassignment,…

2014 Castle Excavation Reports

Last year I headed four weeks of excavations at two previously unexplored castle ruin sites near the Swedish city of Norrköping: Landsjö in Kimstad and Stensö in Östra Husby. Finds and written sources suggest that both were built and inhabited in the 13th and 14th centuries. All known owners were members or close relatives of the powerful Ama family. Now Ethan Aines and I have finished the archive reports, available here on ScienceBlogs [Landsjö and Stensö] and on Archive.org. Rudolf Gustavsson's osteological reports (in Swedish) are included. Comments and questions are most welcome! We will…

Science

I am a minor coauthor on a paper to appear in Science. Sadly thats all I can tell you, since the embargo on this paper has been set for 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time on Thursday, 30 March 2006. Well, until next week :-) OTOH, if you're a reporter (hello John!) Reporters should contact AAAS at 202-326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org to receive an official version of the paper, bearing the imprimatur of the Science embargo policy. (Most reporters are registered with us and therefore can access the official version of the paper directly from EurekAlert!'s password-protected section, http://www.eurekalert.…

A clever compromise

Texas has been considering this application from the Institute for Creation Science for approval to offer a degree in "science" "education" (a double misnomer!). Now there's an excellent idea afloat by the Texas commissioner of higher education — go ahead, give 'em a degree, only call it "creation studies". Perfect! It removes the problem of false labeling, and allowing people who aren't actually qualified to teach science get jobs in the public school system. And it actually gives the graduates of programs in creation studies an edge in acquiring high paying jobs in the Baptist Sunday School…

Machine Translation Lets Me Down

It's a sign of how good computers have gotten that I'm faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It's only when the vanity search turns up something like this blog post in Hebrew that it fails completely, and gives a string of disconnected and incoherent words and phrases. So, here's to the amazing successes of Google Translate. And if anybody can tell me what in the world that blog post says about my…

Happy Saturday Music

SteelyKid's third birthday is next week, but we're going to Kate's mother's for the day itself, so we're having a birthday party today for her and her friends from day care. So, even though all the news is depressing, it's a day to be happy. So here's a happy song: (OK, I don't quite know what to make of the final bit with the flower, but the tune is relentlessly cheery, and never fails to raise a smile when it comes up on iTunes. It's the signature Friday tune of one of the DJ's on KEXP, otherwise I wouldn't ever have heard of it.)

Abandoned Club Houses of Djurhamn

Spent the day walking around Djurhamn with my colleague Kjell Andersson of the Stockholm County Museum, searching for visible field monuments and generally scoping the area out for our coming investigations. We found no new features belonging to the 16th and 17th cenury harbour, but we identified some good areas for further metal detecting and test pitting. Also, I added two sites to my growing collection of abandoned club houses and tree houses (of which I have spoken before here, here and here). Note that one has the remains of a PC, an old 386 or 486 judging from the empty processor…

The moon is going away!

What a perfect situation: it's bitterly cold outside, but the moon happens to be in the sky right outside my front window, so I can see it from the comfort of my living room. It's half gone right now! Now the moon has gone dark and red! Surely these are evil portents. What god should I worship to bring it back? Who should I sacrifice? I'd take a picture, but the moon is high in the sky at an angle that would make it difficult to photograph through my window … and I really don't want to go outside. Fortunately, Lindsey Bradsher sent me a picture she just took.

New Story from the Grumpy Old Bookman

British author and elderblogger Michael Allen, a.k.a. the Grumpy Old Bookman, has just released Lucius the Club. It's a new 48-page crime story available as a free CC-licensed PDF and a €4 chapbook from Lulu. I haven't read it yet, but I've enjoyed his other recent fiction very much and I follow his blog on a daily basis. Get the file and read a few pages! What have you got to lose? Update 21 March: Read it yesterday on my handheld. Excellent work, evoking a very English world of post-war kitchen-sink noir. [More blog entries about books, crime, creativecommons; böcker, deckare.]