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West 86th Street Subway Art 16

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #16 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 15

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #15 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 17

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #17 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 19

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #19 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 14

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway Art #14 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway station of all…

West 86th Street Subway Art 10

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway Art #10 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway station of all…

West 86th Street Subway Art 13

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #13 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 8

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #8 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 9

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #9 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway…

West 86th Street Subway Art 6

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway Art #6 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989; it was mounted on 2 July 2006). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my…

West 86th Street Subway Art 3

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway Art #3 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989; it was mounted on 2 July 2006). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my…

West 86th Street Subway Art 2

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway Art #2 as seen at NYC's 86th Street stop at Broadway for the uptown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989; it was mounted on 2 July 2006). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my…

'Match It For Pratchett' for Alzheimer's Research

tags: Alzheimer's Disease, Terry Pratchett, research, fund raising, medical research Thanks to one of my readers, I just learned that atheist and writer Terry Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld novels, has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease. He has donated half a million pounds (approx $1 million) to Alzheimer's research and appeared in the media highlighting the low levels of research funding that Alzheimer's disease receives. As a result, millions of loyal readers from around the world have responded and are helping to match Terry's donation. If you would…

The Science of StoryTelling: Nobelist Paul Nurse Talks about His Personal Genetic History

tags: The Science of Story Telling, Paul Nurse, genetics, family history, narrative, streaming video This video is a fascinating look at Paul Nurse's personal history .. Nurse, who is a biochemist, Knight, 2001 Nobel Prize Winner and President of Rockefeller University in NYC, reveals how, after 58 years, he finally learned the truth of his own family history. As a boy, Nurse always felt "a little bit different" from the rest of his family. His parents and siblings all left school at age 15 while he excelled at academics and pursued higher education. In his 30s, Nurse's mother confided in him…

Worth Reading: Warning Bells, Burn Pits, and Sewer Mysteries

A few of the recent pieces I've liked (or, in the case of the first item, found horribly disturbing but important): Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Ringing the Warning Bell: Colistin-Resistant Klebsiella J. Malcolm Garcia in Guernica: Smoke Screen ("In Afghanistan, the U.S. military disposes of garbage--computers, motorbikes, TVs, shoes, even human feces--in open burn pits. Are toxic clouds from these sites making everyone sick?" Bonus: Celeste is quoted in the article.) The New York Times' Room for Debate: Could Farms Survive Without Illegal Labor? Helen Branswell at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis…

Clean coal?

Clean coal - as in burning and capturing the CO2 - is an idea being floated. There are obvious problems (apart from anything else, the capture and storage costs extra energy and so burns even more coal...), and AFAIK only a few pilot schemes exist. So the story that a commercial-scale plant was being built was interesting. Desmogblog commented on it under the heading "The Expensive Myth of Clean Coal" (and just in case youre not inclined to follow the link, there's an extra bonus of a gratuitous tart-in-a-bikini awaiting you). It looks to be a coal-industry boondoggle: for a $1.8B plant there…

A small note on the hoax

The recent hoax seems to have been taken down - sad. There is a story about it at Reuters and its everywhere else. I wanted to point out something which no-one else seems to have noticed, which was that the figures for the T and CO2 histories were very obviously faked. They were just straight lines with wiggles drawn on (indeed from my memory the wiggles were all upwards, suggesting that they had been drawn by hand with a pen above a ruler line). This, and various other features many people have noticed, made the fakery rather too obvious to fool anyone for toooo long. Hopefully someone will…

Most-played Boardgames of 2011

When a buddy of mine learned that I keep stats on the boardgames I play, she said, "If I didn't know you, Martin, I'd say you probably suffered from Asperger's syndrome." But hey, Boardgamegeek.com has a nifty book-keeping function, and I enjoy keeping notes! Here are the ten games I've played the most during 2011, all highly recommended. For Sale Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation Bohnanza Small World 7 Wonders Lost Cities Pandemic Magic: the Gathering Innovation Death Angel These are mostly shorter games as such have a greater likelihood of getting played several times in one evening.…

Carbon emissions show sharp rise?

The BBC reports The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year. And then provides various reasons why this is so, including a switch from oil to charcoal as oil prices rise (is this plausible, on the large scale?). Sounds worrying. But... a graph I drew earlier shows CO2 in the atmosphere rising at about 2 ppmv/y, though with wiggles, over the last few years. So I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the recent-increases stuff. [Addendum: M points out that http://www.wmo.int/web/arep/gaw/ghg/ghg-…

Fred Upton and HR 2679

I just looked at the roll call for the votes on HR 2679 and I was quite surprised and disappointed to see Fred Upton's name on the yea list. Upton is a Republican congressman from the 4th district in Michigan, where I grew up and where my parents still live. He's been in office since 1986 and has long had a reputation as a bipartisan thinker, a non-ideologue and a moderate. Why on earth he would align himself with the religious right on this bill is beyond me. This man was elected to office in a primary challenge against Mark Siljander, a complete wingnut who actually sent tapes to all the…

Sandefur's New Book

My thanks to Timothy Sandefur for sending me an advance copy of his new book Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st-Century America. It's apparently not available in stores yet. Amazon says they'll have it the end of October. The book is about eminent domain laws around the country and the threat they pose to property rights. It's published by the Cato Institute and contains cover blurbs from some real heavy hitters, including Richard Epstein and Sandra Day O'Connor, whose eloquent dissent in Kelo was inspiring (and that's not something I ever thought I could say about an O'Connor…

Novak Misunderstands the Constitution

David Mazel emailed me a link to this column by Robert Novak, which discusses Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and the fact that a lot of evangelical Christians won't vote for him because he's a Mormon. Novak writes: Romney is well aware that an unconstitutional religious test is being applied to him, but he may be seriously minimizing the problem's scope as limited to relatively few fanatics. This is nonsense. The constitution forbids religious tests for public office, which means no official eligibility requirement. For example, many states at the time had laws requiring that legislators…

Hovind Arrested for Tax Evasion

From the Pensacola newspaper: A Pensacola evangelist was arrested Thursday and indicted in federal court on 58 charges that include income tax evasion, making threats against investigators and filing false complaints against Internal Revenue Service agents. U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis handed down the indictment against Kent Hovind, who operated a creationist theme park Dinosaur Adventure Land, off Old Palafox Road. Hovind is one of those ridiculous people who claims that he doesn't have to pay taxes. He has two grounds for that. First, he claims to be a resident of the "Republic of…

Rowe and Kuznicki on Gay Marriage and Liberty

These are great examples of why Jason Kuznicki and Jon Rowe are such valuable voices in the blogosphere. Jason posts here and Jon here about gay marriage, liberty and anti-discrimination laws. While I'm not sure their approach is necessarily correct - I frankly haven't thought this issue through very well at all - they offer a point of view you don't often hear, especially from people who are directly affected by such discrimination. They help us understand that the issue isn't quite as simple as we might like to believe. Stil, I love the comment that Jason quotes for sheer snarkiness: We pro…

Falling Rock Zone

Large meteorite hits northern Norway: A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. The meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky above the Arctic Circle, Aftenposten reported. My favorite bit of the (very short) story is this living-in-the-future moment, though: Peter Bruvold, a farmer, said he happened to be out in the fields with a camera because he was tending a foaling mare and he photographed the fireball.…

Lead the World

Derek Lowe offers another Law of the Lab, and it's a good one: Today's law is: You are in real trouble if someone knows more about your project than you do. That's a realization that hits people at some point in their graduate school career - preferably not much past the midpoint. It marks the transition from being a student to being a working scientist. Back in grad school, I had a slightly different spin on this. I used to say that getting a Ph.D. requires that you become the World's Leading Expert in something that nobody else cares that much about. It's a cynical spin on the same basic…

Spinal Tap Fortells the Future

The New York Times Book Review section this week features a big two-page ad for the Penguin Classics/ NBA cross-promotion. This involves a handful (well, four-- a shop-teacher handful) of NBA/ WNBA stars promoting books in the Penguin line, the best of the lot being Dwyane Wade talking about Pride and Prejudice. You can get poster versions of the ads from the site, featuring tasteful black-and-white shots of the players reading their chosen books. Of course, it looks sort of like they're promoting new editions of the books read by the players, a cross-marketing opportunity that, alas, still…

Global cooling and spooks, again

With great excitement, WUWT has discovered some old news: The CIA documents the global cooling research of the 1970’s. But, being WUWT, it gets it wrong. Because the CIA didn't document the research of the time. The document they are citing isn't competent. Nor is any of this new; see A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems for the details. I'll repeat my conclusion from there: Conclusion: this report says more about the CIA, and the dangers of a report being hijacked by a small group of people when not put out for proper review, than it does about the state…

Brain transplant

Following my oops I got a new portege, though it had a blank disc. Fortunately I didn't really care about that, as I wanted to swap discs. This turned out to be a matter of 2 screws on each box, and lo and behold the mind and memory of my old machine is transferred to a shiny new one, with the added benefit of keys that you can read and even press, due to a lack of biscuit crumbs and apple juice residue. The only slight faff was that the wireless wasn't recognised, presumably due to some hardware up/downgrade between the old and news ones. Downloading everything from http://aps2.toshiba-tro.…

Racing Willi Betz

I'm away on conference for a week, but its all tediously commercial-in-confidence. Here is a guessing game: where am I? More useful clues tomorrow. [Update: its a 5-star hotel, but not with this level of service. Where is JA?] The post title comes from my run last night. I only ever seem to run when abroad at conference, which means, not very often. But I'm now a bit fitter with my half hour cycle to and fro work so running is easier. 10km yesterday, by my estimate, along the embankment then up the long side of the island, paced by an enormous river barge with two Willi Betz trucks looking…

Recycled sh*t* from Solomon

Lawrence Solomon seems to have a bee in his bonnet about wikipedia. He really should be writing about the exciting ongoing arbcomm case; but presumably thats too complex for him and would actually require some thinking or research. Instead, having called me Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world's most influential person in the global warming debate.... he has now said may be the world's most influential person in the global warming debate after Al Gore. Can you spot the similarity? Apparently the National Review couldn't, and are happy to print recycled cr*p from Solomon. And…

Blogstorm alert

There is a blogstorm raging these days for those of you with inadequate workplace supervision.  Check here for the latest post from ground zero. The synopsis is: scientist releases paper showing strong correlation between belief in conspiracy theories, free market ideology, anti-science attitudes and the rejection of climate science; climate skeptic blogger community sees conspiracy and scientific fraud.  (To their credit, I have not yet seen the accusation of "socialist".) I don't have much to say about it, I am as embarrassed for these folks as I am amused by the irony of it all.  I should…

Song of the Day

As of today, I can officially no longer claim to be in my "early 40's," so here's a great song with a thematically appropriate title: (The lyrical content has no particular relevance to my life, I hasten to add...) I'm taking a bit of a social-media hiatus at the moment, but it is very nice to see all the well-wishes from Facebook friends and acquaintances. Though I found it a little creepy to go to Google and see a special birthday-cake doodle with "Happy birthday, Chad!" as the mouseover text... Kate and I are leaving tonight for Rome, to go to a friend's wedding there. So you can expect…

154/366: Parking Lot Sunset

Early in this photo-a-day thing I tried to get in the habit of bringing the camera with me when I ran errands, to get pictures of random interesting stuff outside of the immediate neighborhood of our house. I fell out of that, though, when it was actually cold, because I didn't like leaving the camera in the car in freezing temperatures. I had it with me last night, though, because I was taking SteelyKid to Odyssey of the Mind practice. Which was good, because while we were getting our traditional fast-food dinner beforehand, there was a really cool-looking sunset: Sunset over Niskayuna.…

054/366: Unprecedented Catblogging

As noted yesterday, I'm visiting my sister for a few days, since I was on the West Coast anyway. Being here in Southern California, it seems appropriate to jack Kevin Drum's style and do some cat-blogging, and luckily enough, my sister is the Cat Person in the family. So, here they are: My sister's cats. Clockwise from top left: Tate, Topher, Mona, Calliope, Oberon, Molly. SteelyKid was really into the idea that we should get a cat for a while, though she's kind of cooled on that, but she'll probably like this photo a lot. Emmy... not so much. I'm flying home tomorrow, leaving at an…

Eureka: Discovering Your Inner (New) Scientist

Two new items about Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist: 1) WAMC has now posted the interview I did with Joe Donahue on The Roundtable. This was a fun interview, and covers a number of examples from the book, so I think gives you a really nice sense of what it's all about. 2) There's a review of Eureka in New Scientist, along with two other books. It's fun to see all these different publications do reviews, because every reviewer latches onto a different example to feature. You can almost deduce the entire contents of the book if you read all of the different reviews... The New Scientist…

Throwback Thursday: Remembering Neil Armstrong (Synopsis)

“Geologists have a saying: rocks remember.” -Neil Armstrong 45 years ago, the Apollo 11 mission was on its way away from planet Earth and headed towards the Moon, where the first human beings would set foot on the surface just a few days later. Image credit: NASA / Apollo 11, photo by Neil Armstrong. Back in 2012, the very first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, left this world for good. But the impact he had, and what he left behind, are worth remembering, even for those of us who weren't yet alive to remember it firsthand. Image credit: NASA. This is the official NASA / Apollo 11 mission…

Throwback Thursday: Have we found our last fundamental particle? (Synopsis)

“The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other.” -James Smithson Now that the Higgs has been discovered, the Standard Model is complete. But are there any other new particles? Image retrieved from Fermilab, modified by me. If asymptotic safety is right -- and it's looking like the Standard Model might be stable up to energies far beyond the reach of accelerators the size of the entire Earth -- there might not be anything at all accessible to humanity as far as experimental particle physics is concerned. And a Higgs mass of…

Throwback Thursday: The Cosmic Speed Limit (Synopsis)

“All our sweetest hours fly the fastest.” -Virgil The speed of light in a vacuum is the limit for massless particles, but massive ones are limited even further! Have you ever wondered about that? Image credit: ICEPP via https://www.icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/history/lep-e.html (L); LEP / CERN, via http://www.madrimasd.org/ (R). We can get particles in accelerators up to 99.9999999988% the speed of light, and the Universe makes ones that are even faster! But despite all of this, there's a limit, and that limit is more restrictive than the speed of light in a vacuum! Image credit: Simon Swordy (…

What Makes Up The Universe?

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, or falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." -Carl Sagan One of the greatest things we can do -- when we study and learn the story of the Universe -- is simply to tell that story, as best as modern science allows us to. Earlier this week, I had a chance to do this in front of a small, intimate audience at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club here in Portland…

Weekend Diversion: My other car is a neutrino

"Events often move faster than our ability to comprehend them." -Lee H. Hamilton But sometimes, going ever faster is where all the fun is at. Have a listen to the Stray Cats, from their debut album, as they plow through their title track, Built For Speed.Well, believe it or not, I think my car just became a neutrino! Why's that? See for yourself! (For those of you who need a little help, remember that the USA does distances in miles.) Of course, I had to push it just a little bit more to become an OPERA neutrino... so if you see that Cohen-Glashow radiation out there on the highway, don't…

The $23 million dollar man: Peter Popoff

You might not want to look at this story about the televangelist fraud, Peter Popoff around lunchtime — it contains graphic visuals of a known con artist cheerfully defrauding the sick and elderly, and it might leave you a little squeamish. Popoff was discredited by James Randi 20 years ago, as is vividly shown at the link, but he's back now, sucking in millions of dollars every year with his lies. There's also a couple in the story who were sick and unemployed, and who borrowed thousands of dollars from relatives to help them pay their bills…and who instead sent all the money to Popoff, who…

The Nation Corrects Vox on Sanders Tax Hike

A while back Vox produced a tax modeler that would tell you how your taxes would change with Sanders plan. It raised most people's taxes by a few thousand dollars. But the modeling was misleading because the same plan would probably reduce health care costs for those same individuals. I pointed that out back at the time but most of the response to me pointed out was the ridiculous recitation of completely wrong information (from both sides of the debate) so I dropped it because it really doesn't matter. President Sanders or President Clinton would not produce any tax plans. Not their job.…

STEM in 2015: Brianne Bilyeu, Maddy Love, Greg Laden and August Berkshire

Homo naledi and the Chamber of Secrets ~ Psychology's Inner Demons ~ Chilesaurus: The One That Went Vegan ~ Neurons Alter DNA All Day, Every Day Popular science fans may recognize some of these colorful titles from the most recent publication of Discover Magazine's 100 Top Stories of 2015. We at Atheists Talk enjoy a good science-ing now and then, and this Sunday we're going to talk about some of the stories shared by Discover. It's going to be a science smorgasboard extravaganza! Join Brianne Bilyeu, August Berkshire and Maddy Love as they nerd out about the science of 2015. Listen to the…

Republicans Have No Ethics Ever, Proven

There may be a few individuals who are not in politics who have some ethics who still call themselves Republicans. One such person, a friend of mine for whom I have great respect, sent me an email the other day apologizing. For the whole Trump and Republican thing. But at the professional level, there isn't a single Republican out there that is unwilling to stick his slimy nose right up the ass of whichever other Republican happens to be top dog at the moment, putting their own self interest ahead of the nation, of governing, of the people, even of their own families. As proven by events…

Weekend Diversion: Neil Young, Jimmy Fallon, and American Idol

Yes, these three ingredients mixed together amused me more than anything else that happened this week. Don't know what I'm talking about? American Idol -- kicking off Season 9 -- gave us Pants on the Ground, a song written and performed by a 62 year old man who's sick and tired of seeing these young punks with their pants hanging down where no pants were designed to hang. Neil Young is one of the all-time great singer/songwriters, as he's taken on everyone from Nixon to Herbert Walker Bush, and has written some of my favorite songs. But it's the forgotten late-night talk show host, Jimmy…

The next question is, how many of them moonlight as ministers?

Larry Moran sneers at the creationist habit of stoking their numbers by claiming that M.D.s are "science professionals", and therefore bolster their generic claim that 'growing numbers of scientists are defecting from the Darwinist camp'. I'll make Larry's sneer even fiercer by pointing out that many of them are dentists. (I have nothing against doctors and dentists, of course, and have nothing but respect for their important skills. Most are not scientists, however, and don't think like scientists, and don't even pay much attention to the basic scientific literature. Claiming scientific…

Dispatches is Moving

Okay folks, moving day has arrived. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this blog is moving to a new location to be part of a project sponsored by Seed Media Group. That project officially rolls out Wednesday morning. To get to the new Dispatches from the Culture Wars, use the following link: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/ For my fellow bloggers who link to this page, please update those links as soon as possible. For my regular readers, please join me at the new location. I've moved the last few posts over there for some continuity. My plan is to keep this page looking the way it is for a…

Success!

I am happy and proud to report that the reformatting was a smashing success. I've still got a lot of stuff to move back to the hard drive from CD, and a lot of software to reinstall, but I'm up and running and running smoothly. Got my antivirus to install correctly (that was one of the big problems I was having, it wouldn't update itself and it wouldn't let me either uninstall it or reinstall it because it kept saying a previous installation was not completed). I also did add a second hard drive to my computer, an old 40 gig I had laying around, that I can use for data storage so if I run…

Flag Burning Again? Oi

The Senate is once again holding hearings on a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. It's nice to know that in an age of 500 BILLION dollar deficits and terrorism around the world, this is what our elected leaders are wasting their time on. But of course, it's an election year and these kinds of issues help them display their shallow version of patriotism. So they'll posture and preen and gesture and whoop and it will be a grand show for the world to see. At what point do Americans grow up and drop this silly notion that patriotism is wrapped up in a colored piece of cloth? Probably…