Search Content

Displaying results 61001 - 61050 of 87947

I Lost World War II Today

Continuing our military theme from the other day, I regret to inform you, Dear Reader, that the Axis won World War II. After Pearl Harbour, the US couldn't decide whether to concentrate its efforts in the Pacific or the Atlantic, and ultimately came to play only a minor role in the war. Britain, meanwhile, defended itself well and harassed the Axis in Northern Africa, but it lost almost all its overseas colonies to the Japanese and never gained a toehold on the Continent. After losing two huge battles against the Germans in the Ukraine, the Russian forces collapsed, and the Axis powers…

The Magnificent Disinformation Engine

A better title for this post would be "cite your sources" but I need to mirror The Magnificent Climate Heat Engine at WUWT. Guess what? Just a few days after totally missing the importance of heat transport within the climate system WE has finally noticed it. WE read my posts, of course, because several people pointed him at them in the WUWT comments, although he was careful not to engage with those. So he's managed to learn something from me, which is good, but doesn't have the basic honesty to acknowledge that, which is effectively plagiarism, which is expected. Naturally, he doesn't link…

More Obsession with Gay Cartoon Characters

Ace Pryhill has an amusing post about the recent Simpson's episode where Marge's sister marries her lesbian lover and Homer gets ordained over the internet so he can perform gay marriages. My favorite part is this wonderful quote from the endlessly ridiculous L. Brent Bozell: L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, criticized "The Simpsons" for addressing the issue of same-sex marriage, though he said he hadn't seen the episode. "At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public…

Explore the Rest of the Neighborhood

I've been busy today so I haven't had time to write anything, so you all should be out exploring this little corner of the blog neighborhood. Specifically, you should be stopping in at Jason Kuznicki's place to see this post where he fisks the latest ridiculous idea from the religious wrong. And when you're done there, you should head over to Jon Rowe's pad and check out his take on the role of religion in the Declaration of Independence. And while you're there, you should probably steal some of his cookies too. Update: Thanks to Steve Sanders, who just emailed me to tell me that he has…

Weekend Diversion: The Best Discoveries From The High Sierra Music Festival (Synopsis)

“Life is a festival only to the wise.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson Last weekend, I was actually away from the blog for a few days, something that hasn't happened except for one brief trip in March. Only this time, it was 100% for fun, as I was away at the 25 annual High Sierra Music Festival. Image credit: Pulse Radio, via http://pulseradio.net/articles/2015/04/10-music-festivals-that-won-t-br…. For some, festivals are about the people, the atmosphere, or seeing your favorite bands. But for me? The best part was the discovery of new acts that I had never heard before. I'm so pleased, the weekend…

Mostly Mute Monday: The Edge Of A Bubble Wall In Space (Synopsis)

“People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale.” -Nathan Myhrvold When new stars form from a collapsing molecular cloud, the hottest, bluest, brightest stars emit high-energy ultraviolet radiation. This evaporates, ionizes and pushes the gas outwards, creating a bubble effect. Image credit: Copyright 2006 Brad Moore and Southern Astro, via http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/34/image/e/. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope and its ability to hone in…

The LHC made simple (Synopsis)

“Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.” -George R.R. Martin Well, it's finally happened! After a two year upgrade, the LHC is back in business, running again, colliding protons and set to ramp up to a record-setting 13 TeV collision energy between the two beams! Image credit: CERN / ATLAS Collaboration, via http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/collisions…. What will we find? How will we find it? And why do we have a…

The Brilliance of Scientific Assumption (Synopsis)

If you've ever heard someone dismiss evolution, the Big Bang or climate change as "just a theory" and wanted to pull your hair out, you're not alone. In science, after all, theories are the most powerful ideas we have to explain the mechanism behind the most intricate observable phenomena in the Universe. Mercury’s orbit shifts over time due to a deviation from Newtonian gravity.Credit: Wikimedia. But it's where our theories fail, or at the fringes, where observations-or-experiments might disagree with the best theoretical predictions, that progress is made. This tantalizing border between…

Dover Case Resources

The Federal court case over teaching intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania - potentially the most important legal case in this area since 1987's Edwards decision outlawed the teaching of creationism in public school science classrooms - begins on Monday (sidenote to Dan - no continuance as of today, so it looks like you owe me dinner). To help folks keep up with developments in the case, the NCSE has put together a webpage with links to news stories, briefs filed by both sides, expert witness reports, and much more. This page will be continually updated during the trial. The ACLU also…

Farewell to Wilkins

I'm quite disappointed that I didn't get to meet John Wilkins while he was here visiting from Australia, but the closest he got to me was Toronto and things have been much too crazy here for me to get out there and join the howlerfest. PZ Myers made it out there and I sure wish I had. It would have been great to get to meet people like Jeff Shallit, Deb McKay and Larry Moran, folks I consider allies and colleagues without ever having met in person. Even more than that, I wish I'd been able to make it out to the Bay area for his visit to the NCSE gang. Wes Elsberry, Genie Scott, Nick Matzke,…

White House Admonishes Base

The New York Times reports that over the last few days, the White House has been making calls to religious right groups asking them to tone down their rhetoric on Alberto Gonzales' potential nomination to the court: The White House and the Senate Republican leadership are pushing back against pressure from some of their conservative allies about the coming Supreme Court nomination, urging them to stop attacking Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales as a potential nominee and to tone down their talk of a culture war. In a series of conference calls on Tuesday and over the last several days,…

Orwellian Irony

This is just disturbing. Three teachers go to a campaign speech by President Bush. They have tickets for the event that they got from the Republican party headquarters; they give the tickets at the front gate and are let in; then they are approached by event security and told that they have to leave because of what their matching shirts say. And what did they say? Protect Our Civil Liberties And Orwell wept. This is par for the course for the administration, which has made "free speech zones" a regular part of events attended by the President and required loyalty oaths to let folks into…

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my 37th birthday, as Lynn's comment on the previous post revealed, so I think I'll take the rest of the day off from my grueling blog work. Besides that, I feel like crap and I keep having coughing fits. Oh well, life is good anyway. Thanks to my readers for sharing their ideas with me over the last year and to Lynn for bringing me so much joy. Postscript: Of all the strange coincidences....today is also Timothy Sandefur's birthday. I had no idea. Happy Birthday, Mr. Sandefur. I went to school with a girl who was born on the exact same day I was, about 2 hours apart both in time and…

Dennett's Response, via Andrew Sullivan

Yesterday, I wrote about Robert Wright's claim that Daniel Dennett had reluctantly admitted that there is evidence of design in nature. Today, Andrew Sullivan has Dennett's reply: "This is ridiculous: Wright misinterprets his own videoclip (I am grateful that it is available uncut on his website, so that everybody can see for themselves). All I agreed to was that IF natural selection had the properties of embryogenesis (or "an organism's maturation"), it would be evidence for a higher purpose. But I have always insisted that evolution by natural selection LACKS those very properties. And I…

The Artist Formerly Known as Madonna

Madonna has decided that she now wants to be known as Esther. And her reason: I was named after my mother. My mother died when she was very young, of cancer, and I wanted to attach myself to another name, she said. This is in no way a negation of who my mother is. I wanted to attach myself to the energy of a different name. Perhaps you should attach yourself to the "energy" of not being so full of shit. I love this little gem from the interview too: She said Kabbalah is incredibly punk rock and anti-establishment. Kabbalists believe in immortality. They believe that you can overcome death,…

Problem fixed?

The folks at mblog support tell me that the recent problems are all fixed. You may have noticed the sidebar on the left disappearing and reappearing, in whole or in part, seemingly at random, over the last few days. Apparently they were running short of hard drive space and have the problem fixed. I now also have the means to post my entries to two different blogs at once, so from now on I'll be posting all of my entries both here and at my old Blogger page so I have a backup in case this one goes down permanently. Frankly, I have my doubts about mblog. It's a free hosting service, but they…

Snuppy is a real clone!

Remember Snuppy, the cloned puppy? He's been living under a cloud for a while now, since one of his creators was Woo-Suk Hwang, the Korean scientist who was found to have faked data and exploited his workers, and there was concern that perhaps the dog cloning experiment was also tainted. Put those fears to rest. Two groups of researchers have independently analyzed Snuppy and its putative clone parent, and both agree that it is most likely a clone. The nuclear markers between the two were identical, while mitochondrial markers were different—exactly what you'd expect in this kind of clone,…

More Evidence of Rumsfeld's Incompetence

And it's yet another outgoing military commander saying that there was no plan for the post-war occupation of Iraq: Unfortunately, Hagee's comments only deepen the mystery. He says he was deeply concerned about who would take charge of major Iraqi cities, like Najaf, as the Marines pushed through them on their way to Baghdad. Hagee says he asked his boss again and again who would take charge of those cities. He wanted to know what the plan was for Phase IV -- military terminology for the phase that follows the end of major combat operations. Phase IV is, in other words, what comes after "…

Sacred and Profane

The city of Nara, near Kyoto, is full of temples and shrines dating back to the eigth centruy, when it was briefly the capital of Japan. One of the largest shrines in the city, the Kasuga Taisha shrine, is dedicated to deities that use deer as their sacred messengers. As a result, deer are allowed to roam freely in Nara, and there are times when you can almost believe that they are sacred messengers of the gods: Other times, not so much: (The top picture shows a deer reclining next to the stone marker at the entrance of Todai-ji Temple, which houses the Great Buddha. The bottom picture was…

String Theory Is a Bunch of Crap

At least, that's the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the fact that not one string theory result has been nominated for either the Physics Result of 2006 or the Astronomy Result of 2006... Well, OK, there are other conclusions to draw, such as "Nobody has nominated any string theory results because nobody has nominated much of anything," or "Nobody has nominated any string theory results because nobody reads your stupid blog anyway, you nihilistic Bush-hating anti-America liberal commie type." These might even be in better agreement with the experimental data... I really was hoping for…

Entartete Kirche

Perhaps it was just poor framing when Cardinal Joachim Meisner said: "Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism and culture becomes degenerate," he said. The word "degenerate" is hardly ever used in Germany today because of its known association with the Third Reich. Well, yes, I can imagine that there is some sensitivity to the use of the word … but perhaps they should also consider the substance of his remarks. He has basically just said atheists are incapable of producing art: no music, no beauty, no poetry, none of the great works of the human…

Chemistry: The Overflow Category

The announcement of a distinctly bio-flavored Nobel Prize in Chemistry has a lot of science-blogging folks either gloating (see also here) or bemoaning the use of Chemistry as an overflow category for prizes awarded to work in other disciplines. Of course, it must be noted that this is not a new state of affairs. After all, Lord Rutherford, the man famous for saying "In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting" won the 1908 Nobel Prize in... Chemistry. So, there's a long and distinguished tradition of chemistry as the overflow category for smart people from other fields…

First Weekend

The first weekend of the Fall term is always a strange time. Classes are back in session, so I'm in Teaching Mode, but there really isn't that much to do, because I haven't collected any work requiring grading yet. I always feel like the last weekend before classes ought to be some grand last hurrah of the summer, followed by an unremitting grind for ten weeks, but in reality, the academic grind takes a few weeks to really ramp up. And somehow, every year, I'm surprised by this. Anyway, I find myself with some Things to Do, but nothing all that pressing. And it's a beautiful day here after a…

Universes Are Cheaper in Bulk

Via Boing Boing, a "conceptual artist" is selling a make-your-own-universe kit: According to [a slightly garbled explanation of quantum mechanics], any kind of measurement causes the universe to split and this is the basis of Keats' new device. His universe creator uses a piece of uranium-doped glass to create a steam of alpha particles, which are then detected using a thin sliver of scintillating crystal. Each detection causes the creation of a new universe. The kits sell for $20. For a limited time only, though, I'll make you a better offer: if you send me $15, I won't send you an art…

Fourth Time's the Charm

Congratulations to SpaceX for successfully launching a payload into orbit after three failed attempts: The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) lifted off at about 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT) from the U.S. Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Defense Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) southwest of Hawaii. The successful space shot came less than a month after an engine timing error during stage separation doomed SpaceX's third Falcon 1 test. "As the saying goes, the fourth time's the charm," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told an elated…

Find a Pattern

What's this graph? The cosmic microwave background? Preliminary results from the LHC? No, it's SteelyKid's feeding schedule. The horizontal axis is in days since we brought her home, the vertical axis is time of day on a 24-hour scale (in half-hour bins), and the color scale indicates the duration of the feeding in minutes. If you can spot any clear pattern in this, you're doing better than I am. There may be a hint of a developing pattern toward the end (she's eaten at 1am, 8am, 1:30 pm, and 5pm each of the last four days), but there's still a lot of scatter. There were some points in the…

links for 2008-07-23

'Theology in Life' :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "Benedictine's new "Theology in Life" certificate program includes one class each in the theology of freedom, justice, love, and science, respectively. Majors will go on to take upper-level courses in areas including sacramental theology, the New Te (tags: academia religion humanities social-science science education) Brigham And Women's Hospital - Press Releases "researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) designed a pre-clinical course for Harvard Medical School students to enhance…

Unions and Sour Grapes

One final note on the teachers-unions argument: The comments to the original post on the low regard for teachers relative to lawyers immediately jumped on the union thing. Commenter Doug Hering provided what's probably the best statement of the causal link: I do agree that teachers must be treated as professionals. However, part of that is eliminating a union. How many professional groups have unions? It seems to me that gives the impression of a non-professional class of employees. You hear this sort of thing all the time, most frequently from engineers and computer-industry people, and…

Congratulations to _________

The Iowa caucuses are finally over, and Daily Kos has the scoop: Finally, primary season is over, and it couldn't come soon enough. After a week of conflicting polls and a flurry of last minute campaigning by all parties, ______ has (narrowly / decisively) won the Iowa caucuses. Numerous factors contributed to this very predictable Iowa win. First, the ground game, and/or lack thereof. Second, the weather, most specifically the fact that the weather was different from what it might have been. And third, as always in Iowa, caucus-goers' "second choices" were (futile / important / decisive). If…

Tree of SCIENCE!!! #9

This one may not look like much, but it covers a lot of ground for the Tree of SCIENCE!!!: This ornament is built around a copper plaque, and copper is a very good conductor, which means it includes an element of solid state physics. The copper in the plaque is from the roof of the Library of Congress, which means that this stands for the publication and dissemination of scientific information. SCIENCE!!! can't function properly without wide distribution of results. Hey to Bora. Finally, the plaque is embossed with the quote "Too low they build who build beneath the stars," which again is a…

links for 2007-12-03

Hamlet - The Text Adventure "It's so unfair! You're in trouble again, just because you called your uncle - or rather, your new stepfather, Claudius - a usurping git." (tags: games internet literature silly) YouTube - The Killers - Don't Shoot Me Santa Silly spoof Christmas song video, featuring Brandon Flowers in a tragic sweater. (tags: youtube video music silly) Dynamical Control of Matter-Wave Tunneling in Periodic Potentials Shaking a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice can stop the atoms from moving through the lattice. (tags: physics experiment low-temperature news…

Presentation Poll: Outline or No Outline?

We have a summer student seminar series in the science and engineering departments here, running two days a week at lunchtime with three students each day giving 15 minute presentations on their summer research projects to other students and faculty. The student talks are split almost 50/50 overall on whether to provide an outline at the start of the talk or not. About half of the students put up a slide listing the component parts of their talk ("First, I'll give some motivation for the experiment, then I'll talk about the apparatus, then..."), and about half jump right into the talk,…

Many Worlds, Many Treats: The Movie

Another dramatic reading of a chapter from How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, just because. This is Chapter 4, which is based on the original Many Worlds, Many Treats post that kick-started the whole thing: I'm sitting at the computer typing, when Emmy bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she's sniffing the floor around my feet intently. "What are you doing down there?" "I'm looking for steak!" she says, wagging her tail hopefully. "I'm pretty certain that there's no steak down there," I say. "I've never eaten steak at the computer, and I've certainly never dropped any on the floor." "…

Technical Difficulties

The Internet has been broken all afternoon at Chateau Steelypips, which is where there hasn't been anything new psoted, and why it's taken forever to approve a couple of comments that were held for moderation. Sorry about that. (I'm typing this from my office on campus-- we turned Her Majesty's evening walk into an email-checking trip, with the added bonus being able to chase rabbits across the lawns on campus. Great fun was had by all, at least until I wiped out on the wet grass...) As long as I'm posting to say why I haven't been posting, though, I might as well turn this into a technical…

Sports Fault Lines

The Times takes up the critical question of locating the boundary between Red Sox and Yankees fans in New York and Connecticut. They do a comprehensive survey of the boundary line in CT, but only a fairly cursory sweep north. Albany is on the Yankees side of the line, but it's a near thing. Union's student body is drawn heavily from New England, and runs probably 50/50, maybe leaning a bit toward the Sox (since some of the NY students are actually Mets fans). Sadly for Kate, the situation is less positive for expat Bostonians in football-- between the Giants (whose training camp is held in…

"Frosty the Coalman"

This is too hilarious for words, seven lumps of coal wearing scarves and toques singing Christmas carols about "clean coal" and energy independence! There are six to chose from, I didn't get far but my favorite is transcribed below: Frosty the Coalman, is a jolly happy soul, He's abundant here in America and he helps our economy roll. Frosty the Coalman's getting cleaner every dayHe's affordable and adorable and helps workers keep their pay.There must have been some magic in clean coal technology,For when they looked for pollutants there were nearly none to see.Oh, Frosty the Coalman, is a…

Life in Biosphere 2

Several years ago, I was at a going away party for Bruno. Bruno was a hard core scientist who was being brought into the Biosphere project down in Arizona to get it straightened out after a long period of bad press. One of the folks at the party was an archaeology graduate student, Ben, who had a very dry sense of humor. As Ben was leaving that evening, he turned to Bruno to wish him well. "Bruno, see you around! And good luck with the terrarium!" .... Sorry, that's my only Biosphere story. Here's a Ted Talk on it: Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in…

Jackson Coroner: "Cause of Death" Will Wait Weeks

The coroner's preliminary report has come out, and it is vague. Rather than reporting, for instance, a simple heart attack/stroke, the coroner indicates that there is no obvious cause (some physical, visible thing) of such a thing, and that actual 'cause of death' will be specified only after toxicology screens and other tests. The word on the street (well, actually, on my TV) is that the multi-week delay the coroner indicates will mainly be caused by being really really careful so they don't screw this up. In other words, SOP plus. Various sources are also indicating that Jackson has…

South Carolina Governor AWOL?

UPDATE: There are reports that the missing governor is tweeting. These reports are unconfirmed. His wife does not know where is his. The lieutenant governor does not know where he is. It is said that "he needed some time away from his children to write something." It is said he is working on a book. No one has seen him since Thursday. Makes sense to me. His chief of staff claims to know where he is. But he would say that even if he didn't. Apparently, not having a governor for a few days is not that big a deal. I say, give it a week then maybe go looking for him. BTW, this…

Girls Doing Math

This is a struggle I can relate to: Perez Hilton thinks that hot chicks can't do math. I have taught math to children of a variety of ages. It is difficult to convince young women in our society that they can do math. Young women often lack self-confidence about mathematics. Many of them think that "only the ugly, unpopular girls" do math. One high school student once told me that she didn't want to go to a summer math program because if she did "everyone will think I'm uncool." See this post for the big picture and the gory details. I can tell you that there was a lot of stuff going on in my…

How many Democrats have been governor of Minnesota?

The answer will shock and amaze you. At the moment, we don't officially have a state level Democratic Party, but rather, a hybrid known as the Democratic Farm Labor (DFL) party. But there used to be a Democratic Party, and it provided the state with a total of four governors. The Farm Labor party supported three, and the DFL gave us five. So, one could say that the state of Minnesota has sort of had 12 governors from what is now the equivalent of the Democratic Party. A grand total of 26 Minnesota governors have been Republicans, and one independence (That's be Jesse). (That is a slight…

Be a Quitter

It is not easy to quit smoking. It is not easy to be blogger. My friend DuWayne is trying to do both at once. I'm a soon to be ex-smoker. My name is DuWayne Brayton and I have been smoking for about sixteen years now. I've had enough - though embarrassingly, it has taken the price of tobacco doubling, for me to decide to quit. ... I am hoping to hear from you. I would really like to get some other smokers - current and ex, to post their stories. If you would like to contribute, you can drop a comment, or send me an email at duwayne.brayton at gmail .com. You will have to sign up for a…

Jaguars now extinct in US?

The federal government has opened a criminal investigation into the capture and death of the last known jaguar in the United States, amid accusations that a biologist working for the state illegally baited a trap to attract the cat. The 118-pound male jaguar, known as Macho B, was captured on Feb. 18 in a leg-hold snare placed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in a rugged mountainous area southwest of Tucson. The animal, which was described in field reports as healthy and robust, was tranquilized, equipped with a radio-tracking collar and released from the trap. The jaguar, which was…

Totally Rude Comet to Visit Earth. Briefly. Green. And Backward.

Just who does this comet think it is? The comet Lulin, discovered last year by a Chinese teenage amateur astronomer, has never been here before. This is its first pass around the sun. It will, owing to a number of different poorly explained by science journalists effects, fly at the sun backwards, spewing green gasses. Only first time comets spew the green gas. Then it will fly around the sun and back out into the far reaches of the solar system. The comet will actually capture enough energy from this one single trip around the sun to escape the gravitational space time warp of our…

The cookies

We went out to cross country ski this morning. Never got to ski because it got to warm and rainy, so we went instead downtown and eventually to the Walker to appreciate some modern art. People do not go to the Walker museum of modern art in Minneapolis to appreciate the art as much as to affect the appearance of understanding the art. Which they don't. Because you can't, and the sooner you understand that, the quicker you will enjoy it and the less annoying of a person you will be. But I digress. The point is that the cookies, I suspect under armed guard, arrived and were there on my…

Congressional Threat against Open Access

It what may be little more than a turf battle among members (committees, really) in the US Congress, a major piece of legislation supporting Open Access in research may be in danger. There is an interesting piece about this in ars technica: The House of Representatives has seen the introduction of legislation, HR 6845 that, depending on its final format, may significantly curtail or eliminate the NIH's ability to continue its open access policy. The current bill would prevent any arm of the federal government from making research funding contingent upon "the transfer or license to or for a…

Close Encounter of the Bear Kind

A landlocked polar bear, too close for comfort, forced a crew of five Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists to evacuate a remote camp in northern Alaska. The scientists were studying the impacts of climate change on Arctic shorelines. Typically at this time of year, polar bears spend their days hunting seals on sea ice, but recent warming has caused the ice to recede miles from shore. In fact, the bears have been trapped on land in Arctic Alaska all spring and summer, unable to swim out to sea ice. Their condition is unknown. "It is ironic that our efforts to understand how…

First Guantanamo Bay video Released

This is reportedly a Canadian citizen ... 16 year old Omar Khadr ... being questioned by Canadian officials regarding his involvement in the death of a US soldier in Afghanistan. Khadar is accused of throwing a greneade (in 2002) that killed the soldier. This interrogation is dated to 2003. The footage was made public by Mr Khadr's lawyers following a Supreme Court ruling in May that the Canadian authorities had to hand over key evidence against him to allow a full defence of the charges he is facing. One of those lawyers, Dennis Edney, told the BBC his client was seen in a distressed…

Join us at the SF con next weekend

Just a reminder that I'll be at MoonBase ConFusion at the Detroit-Troy Marriott in Troy, Michigan this coming weekend. I don't think it's too late to get a room, and you can definitely still sign up to attend! I'm committed to do a reading Friday evening, panels on "Remaking Humanity" and "Singularity or Rapture?" on Saturday, an Evolution Q&A on Saturday, and a discussion of evolution with kids on Sunday. Oh, and there's a casual coffee hour with me on Sunday morning. From the schedule it sounds like there will be parties going on at all hours, too, so I'm hoping no one shows up for that…

Christopher Hitchens Has Died

By now I'm sure everyone has heard that Christopher Hitchens has died. I don't have much to add to what everyone else has said, so I'll keep this short. I regard God is Not Great as a masterpiece, and if that had been the only thing he ever wrote, then, as we like to say at Passover, dayenu. Whatever the topic, to read Hitchens, or to hear him speak, was to gain an appreciation for what the English language could me made to do. Hitchens wasn't always right (his disastrous support for the Iraq war and his cartoonish hatred of the Clintons come immediately to mind), but he was so eloquent…