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Good Stuff from Rosenhouse

Jason Rosenhouse has gotten a lot of attention today with a link from DailyKos, and I think he deserves even more. He has a couple of cool posts up that are worth reading. The first is about how desperate the IDers are to claim any article that contains the word 'design' as an ID-inspired article. He effectively shred's Dembski's reference to one new one in particular. The second is about George Carlin's "I'm a Modern Man" routine, which is the one he performed on the Tonight Show the night he was on with Ann Coulter. It's a brilliant examination of marketing slogans and catchphrases, which…

Bush Changes Policy on Detainees

From the Financial Times: The White House confirmed on Tuesday that the Pentagon had decided, in a major policy shift, that all detainees held in US military custody around the world are entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. The FT learned that Gordon England, deputy defence secretary, sent a memo to senior defence officials and military officers last Friday, telling them that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions - which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners and requires certain basic legal rights at trial - would apply to all detainees held in US military custody.…

Jurisdiction Limits Bill Defeated

HR 2679 is not the only attempt by the religious right to rig the rules of the game because they keep losing. HR 2389, the "Pledge Protection Act of 2005", is another bill to do the same thing in a different way, by limiting the jurisdiction of Federal courts to hear any case involving the pledge of allegiance: no court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, the Pledge of Allegiance, as defined in section 4…

Roy Moore Goes Down (Pun Intended)

Roy Moore was thrashed in the Republican primary for governor of Alabama, as expected. With 97% of the precincts reporting, Bob Riley was leading 67-33. Here's my favorite quote, from an MSNBC article: Riley said voters saw state government has changed while he has been in office. "People appreciated the difference in the level of corruption we had in the past and the corruption we don't have today," he said. His challenger, Moore, said: "God's will has been done." If I were you, Roy, I'd be a little pissed off about this. I mean, you stood up for the Big Guy for years, and it's his will that…

What "Fair and Balanced" Really Means

You have to see this ridiculous snippet from Tim Graham at the National Review's blog. It speaks volumes, and loudly: On the occasion of the final episode of NBC's Will & Grace, Katie Couric insisted, "on a serious note," that it's one of her daughter's favorite shows, and it's so important to teach tolerance of "people who are different" at a "very early age." Anyone who expected a fair and balanced anchorwoman at CBS on the hot-button social issues, shred your illusions now. Apparently, if you think tolerance is important, you can't be "fair and balanced". And the alternative is...what…

Who Put Judith Reisman on the FDA Board?

Someone left a link to this article about the FDA dragging their feet in making Plan B contraception available without a prescription. Take a look at what it says about an internal memo from one of the insiders: In the memo released by the FDA during the discovery process, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency medical officer, wrote: "As an example, she stated that we could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B." Rosebraugh indicated he…

Snow Replaces McClellan

In an interesting reversal of tradition, a member of the media has left to become a paid liar press secretary. Tony Snow, Fox News personality, is replacing Scott McClellan as White House press secretary. We're used to seeing government spokespeople becoming pundits; George Stephanopolous, Dee Dee Myers, Tony Blankley, Pete Williams, Chris Matthews, Hodding Carter and many others have made the transition from government PR flak to allegedly serious journalist or talking head. But this is the first time it's gone the other way. Of course, since he works for Fox News, Snow has, for all…

Keeping Us In the Dark

You might think that, being a sciene blogger and all, I would have sources of science news that aren't available to the average person on the street. You would be right, though they're not as useful as you might think... The source for today's news teaser is actually a thank-you email from a prospective student I talked to on Friday. So, anyway, those little scamps at NASA are playing all coy with some sort of announcement regarding dark matter: Astronomers who used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 21, to announce how dark and normal…

Seed on the Large Hadron Collider

My Corporate Masters have finally posted the piece that ran in the most recent print edition of the magazine, in which prominent physicists comment on the LHC. They've got predictions and explanations of why the LHC is interesting from an impressive array of people. Most of the answers are pretty predictable. Lisa Randall talks about extra dimensions, Leonard Susskind about the Anthropic Principle, etc. My favorite answer, though, is Steven Weinberg's: What terrifies theorists is that the LHC may discover nothing beyond the single neutral "Higgs" particle that is required by the standard…

DonorsChoose Update

ScienceBlogs Charity Liason Janet Stemwedel provides an update of the first two days of the ScienceBlogs fundraiser for DonorsChoose: over $8,000 in direct contributions, with our Corporate Masters at Seed agreeing to match up to $10,000. Not bad for two days, on a weekend no less. As for the local update, the Uncertain Principles challenge drive stands at $310, of which $100 is my personal contribution (I actually gave them $200, but didn't get the second $100 contribution recorded as part of my challenge). That's not bad, but we're getting our clocks cleaned by the bio nerds-- come on,…

Nerdify the World

Scott Aaronson takes up the eternal question of why there are so few women in science. His contribution to the nature/ nurture side of the debate is particularly noteworthy: To put the point differently: suppose (hypothetically) that what repelled women from computer science were all the vending-machine-fueled all-nighters, empty pizza boxes stacked to the ceiling, napping coders drooling on the office futon, etc.; and indeed that men would be repelled by such things as well, were it not for a particular gene on the Y chromosome called PGSTY-8. In that case, would the "cause" of the gender…

A Nice Day for Not Blogging

That's what yesterday was, at least. It was a gorgeous spring day here, which we spent mostly outside, first doing some errand-running, and then some lounging in the sun reading and napping. I didn't even try to keep track of what was posted on other blogs, and I didn't miss it all that much-- it was much more entertaining to watch the dog patrolling the back yard against squirrel incursions. Spending a slow day yesterday means that I've ended up with an awful lot to do today. In fact, I'm typing this from my office (yes, before 10:00 on Easter Sunday), and heading down to the lab once I…

Speaking of Science Education

On a note related to the previous entry, Inside Higher Ed had a longer story about Carl Wieman leaving Colorado for Canada (following in the footsteps of his post-docs?), another guy putting his money where his mouth is: First, he contributed $250,000 of his Nobel Prize award to the Physics Education Technology Fund supporting classroom initiatives at CU-Boulder. He hoped it would prompt other donations, but the momentum never materialized. Last year, during his sabbatical, Wieman wrote 35 proposals for funding for teaching projects. All he got was one small grant from the National Science…

Great Moments in Exam Grading

(For reasons unclear to me, Mixed States doesn't seem to pick up scheduled posts in the RSS feed, even after they're published. I don't know if other RSS aggregators have the same problem, but if you were wondering what happened to the promised True Lab Story, here it is.) A question from yesteerday's final exam, paraphrased slightly: Element X decays into Element Y with a half-life of 30 minutes. You are given a sample containing three times as many atoms of Y as X. If the initial sample was pure X, how long ago was it prepared? One student wrote: It seems like a lifetime ago... (He also…

New Book Reviews

At the Tor party at Boskone, Teresa Nielsen Hayden introduced me to Jim Kelly as "a reviewer." While technically somewhat accurate (I do occasionally post book reviews), and a better answer to "Why are you at this party?" than "I'm a guy with a web site," it made me feel a little guilty for shamefully neglecting my book log these past few months. Guilt is a wonderful spur to action, so I've posted a bunch of reviews over there this weekend, all of them at least vaguely related to Boskone: The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell Permanence by Karl Schroeder The…

Common software engineering terms

Pony - something that the customer wants, and which might even make sense, but isn't going to get done within your timescales. Might get done later. Unicorn - Like a pony, but doesn't actually make sense, so will never be done. Zombiecorn - Like a unicorn, but it won't die, no matter how often you prove that it won't work. But that is a very short post, so in no clear order: Nitpicking others' arguments is not the same thing as "critical thinking." That involves nitpicking your own arguments. from Bickmore's Laws updates. Timmy is amusing on The Great Norwegian Butter Famine. I'm not going…

Tweaking the wackos

Via Eli I saw that there was some odd stuff at WUWT (nothing new there you might say). The weirdness is the ATI vs Mann case, or whatever it is called, and the ATI are complaining that Mann is allowed to be a party to a case about his own emails. Or something; the legalese is dull, obviously. The ATI counsel appear to have been doing some very dodgy things, like running the case whilst working for the EPA. Anyway, I thought it would be entertaining to tweak them a bit, and did so for a while. What is funny (apart from their inability to count to 4) is the way they are happy to leap upon…

E+E libel: Gavin strikes again

The story so far: "Energy and Environment" threatens to sue RealClimate, and RC tells them they are a bunch of bozos. But now the Grauniad picks up the story. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen attempts to fight back by asserting that Every paper that is submitted to the journal is vetted by a number of experts but noticeably does *not* use the magic phrase "peer review". So it looks like E+E are going to concede by default, which leaves their reputation in tatters: as Gavin says: You would need a new editor, new board of advisors, and a scrupulous adherence to real peer review, perhaps ... using…

Snowy again

Time for a few linky type things. The first couple point to the New Blog in case you've missed it. * Snowy again by me, about the recent weather. * Christmas Head * xkcd Christmas Tree (thanks Mayank) and on wikileaks :-) * Lamest edit wars on wikipedia. The Bot wars section is good. Of course, wikipedia is soft nowadays, with the block-fingers too poised. We had real edit wars in the old days. * Beautiful supernova fragments via Bad Astronomy. As a species we are frequently rubbish but occaisionally sublime. * J+J go to AGU but don't find much except Macs. A nice dig at Curry's incoherence…

Amateurish Supercomputing Codes?

Via mt I find too much of our scientific code base lacks solid numerical software engineering foundations. That potential weakness puts the correctness and performance of code at risk when major renovation of the code is required, such as the disruptive effect of multicore nodes, or very large degrees of parallelism on upcoming supercomputers [1] The only code I knew even vaguely well was HadCM3. It wasn't amateurish, though it was written largely by "software amateurs". In the present state of the world, this is inevitable and bad (I'm sure I've said this before). However, the quote above is…

Midsummer madness

No, not arbcomm, though they seem to be fairly wacky. This summer has been very disconnected, but I'm finally back, so expect more unbridled tat. I was going to take a peek at the sea ice situation, on the off-chance that no-one else had, but googled it first and ended up with Greenpeace's sea ice 'mistake' delights climate change sceptics. Strange stuff. People forgetting to say "sea" in front of "ice" is hardly new or interesting, though, except in August when nothing happens. mt has the tedious detail so you don't have to bother. But there is plenty more weird stuff. The Mighty James Annan…

Gore vs Armstrong. Or not

I encountered [[J Scott Armstrong]] via his wiki entry, and the blogosphere, when he proposed a $20,000 bet with Gore (though since each side was supposed to put up $10,000 this seems like puffery from the start). JA pointed out the obvious reasons why the bet is trickery. On Armstrong's part, this seems to have developed into a website theclimatebet.com/, and its fairly clear which side they are on. The rubbish keeps coming back onto wiki, although it dies quickly. So far so boring. Gore's basic response has been "go away I'm busy", which is fair enough. I'm slightly curious that he hasn't…

G8 and climate: more words

The G8 have spoken: We seek to share with all Parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognizing that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies, consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Nurture comment The statement, which seems purposefully vague, also fails to clarify which nations would have to make the…

Monckton goes all out birther

Via Thngsbreak, we have the charming Lord Monckton back at it with all out Birtherism: The diligent, unpaid heroes who have been investigating the dodgy document for more than a year on behalf of the people of Maricopa County, Ariz., have found a long list of irregularities in Mr. Obama’s identification documents. I have used the investigators’ list to draw up a schedule of probabilities – one for each individual irregularity. The probability that the “birth certificate” and other Obama identity documents are genuine is just 1 in 75 sextillion. Funny, that was just about the same odds I gave…

How the dinosaurs died

Gather 'round, children, and dear old Unca Jack will explain to you how the dinosaurs went extinct. It's not how you think. There were no meteors or comets, no egg-eating mammals, no saurian pandemics. It's because so many plants died in the great flood. And then, you see, since only the dinosaurs were afflicted with this oxygen deficit, God's chosen people could then run around with pointy sticks and kill them all as they tried to hide in the clouds on mountaintops. Isn't that sweet and heartwarming? God saved the beautiful dinos so they could gasp and choke and suffer while little people…

Talking about the weather....

[Update: as pointed out in comments, this forecast is for a town called North Pole, Alaska, not the geographic north pole, or even the magnetic one...I must apologize for my haste and sloppiness.  On the other hand, this incident has cleared up a number of long-standing structural engineering questions I have had about Santa's Workshop...]   I have never checked a site like Weather.com for the North pole before, so not really sure how much to trust this forecast.  If it is accurate, we are looking at some pretty balmy weather up there for the next ten days and perhaps a late finish for the…

089/366: Seasonal

Saturday was still warm, but grey and rainy, so we needed indoor activities. We took the kids down to the Roberson Museum to see their annual Christmas display, with lots of trees donated and decorated by local organizations, toys and games from the 50's and 60's, and a giant model train display. And the "International Forest" of trees decorated in the style of various countries. The Polish display at the Roberson "International Forest" of Christmas trees. This is the Polish display; SteelyKid was duly impressed to learn that the word for the heraldic bird at the top of that flag is the…

020/366: Scratch Work

I got a little bit of time today to play with the new lens, which included a couple of nice shots of the kids. I'm trying not to have this be "photo of the kids of the day," though, so here's a different shot making use of the limited depth of field of the f/2.8 lens: Scratch paper with calculations for a football physics post at Forbes. That's the half-sheet (it's the back of a draft of a book proposal, if you must know) of projectile motion calculations that I scribbled down while writing this Forbes post about the dumb football commentary "he caught the ball at its highest point". Which…

Friday Giant Children Blogging 082815

SteelyKid starts second grade next week, and her summer project was to read Julius, the Baby of the World and make a poster with baby pictures of herself. This, of course, led to looking at a lot of old photos of SteelyKid, including many of the Baby Blogging shots I took back in the day with Appa for scale. And now, of course, both kids are way bigger than Appa, so they wanted some up-to-date scale photos. Which, of course, I had to share with the Internet. So, behold, the attack of the giant children: SteelyKid and the Pip are HUGE! Standing photo so you can see Appa for proper scaling…

All We Are Saying Is Give Physics a Chance

Last week, the blog Last Word On Nothing did a piece on the best and worst sciences to write about, and the two writers tapping physics as the worst said things that were really disappointing to hear from professional writers. I nearly wrote an angry rant here in response, but Jennifer Ouellette covered it more diplomatically than I would've, so I opted to try for a more positive response over at Forbes: Four Reasons to Not Fear Physics. Would've been better to get this out much earlier in the week, but it's the next-to-last week of the term, and I was buried in grading all this week, and it'…

Ain't No Party Like a SteelyKid Party

I've mentioned in a few places that SteelyKid frequently comes home from school/ camp/ day care singing garbled versions of current pop hits. So for the first time since about 1990, I added a Top 40 station to my car radio presets, so I would know what she was actually trying to sing. This leads to a bunch of seat-dancing and sing-along in the back seat as I drive her to taekwondo and so on, so I give you three of the songs that she's grooving two these days: First up, we have: My first reaction to hearing that was "Hey, it's great that Morris Day is getting work..." But, you know, I enjoyed…

Messier Monday: Virgo’s Final Galaxy, M100 (Synopsis)

“From a little spark may burst a flame.” -Dante Alighieri It's hard to believe that less than two years ago, we hadn't even begun Messier Monday, and now there are fewer than 20 objects left! Today represents a great milestone, as we finally take on the last of fifteen galaxies that Messier catalogued as part of the Virgo Cluster! Image credit: Mike Hankey, via http://www.mikesastrophotos.com/galaxies/m100/; annotation & magnification by me. Even though Messier couldn't see the details that modest amateurs can see today, his (and Méchain's) discovery-and-cataloguing of this object was…

Is our Universe left-handed? (Synopsis)

“Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical laws.” -Tsung-Dao Lee We normally think of the Universe as being symmetric, in the sense that no one direction, location or configuration is inherently preferred over another. But at some level, the laws of physics aren't completely symmetric, as we see from the decays of certain elementary particles. Image credit: author durbarsquare of http://readingpenrose.…

Messier Monday: The Most Perfect Elliptical, M89 (Synopsis)

“We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.” -Blaise Pascal By now, you've probably learned that Messier objects -- and galaxies in particular -- come in a huge, rich variety of types, structures and compositions. But sometimes, the simplest structure of all is the rarest. Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried Kohlert, with M89 (left) and M90 (right) together, via http://www.astroimages.de/en/gallery/M89.html. Think about it: most galaxies are classified as spirals, ellipticals or irregulars. But when was the last time you heard of a spherical…

Weekend Diversion: Planetary Beers (Synopsis)

“I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence.” -Gustav Holst There are some great, creative works out there that take their inspiration from the amazing natural phenomena of this Universe. While perhaps Gustav Holst's suite, The Planets, is best known for translating the celestial wonders into terrestrial ones, I'd like to share with you the less-well-known song of Ferraby Lionheart, Small Planet, while I take you through this weekend's wonder. Image credit: author WP, via Wikimedia Commons uploader Kwamikagami under c.c.-by-…

Ask Ethan #45: How deep does the Multiverse go? (Synopsis)

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” -Dr. Seuss For almost a year now, you've all been sending in your questions and suggestions to me, and I've been picking my favorite one of the week for Ask Ethan, our weekly Q&A series. This week, though, the question goes a little deeper than I'm used to taking on. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons users Frédéric MICHEL and Azcolvin429, annotated by me. Our observable Universe goes on for 46 billion light-years in all directions, but what's out there beyond what we can observe?…

Guest Post: The Real Dangers of Mercury (Synopsis)

“All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” -Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim Some scientific topics are so far outside my area of expertise that I need to bring in outside help to do it justice. Today, we're lucky enough to have a guest post from Adrianne Stone, who walks us through the history of mercury and its actual toxicity in various compounds and doses. Image credit: Associated Press, via http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Mercury-pollution-a-step-closer-to…. If you've ever simply heard the word mercury…

Incredibly rare “back-to-back” maximum eclipses are coming! (Synopsis)

“And everything under the sun is in tune But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” -Pink Floyd We normally think of eclipses as rare phenomena, something that happens only occasionally. While it's true than any particular location only experiences eclipses -- particularly solar eclipses -- infrequently, we actually experience these things around four times a year, typically, somewhere on Earth. Image credit: Chaisson & McMillan, Astronomy Today. If you've been paying attention, you might have heard that we're in store for a total lunar eclipse just next week here on Earth, and that it will…

Weekend Diversion: Anti-Piracy Entertainment (Synopsis)

“[M]y goal is to always come from a place of love… but sometimes you just have to break it down for a motherfucker.” -RuPaul We've all had to face the dilemma, when we can't easily afford something, whether to forego it, or whether to obtain it through means that don't compensate the original content creator. There's a great Donna Summer song that I think applies here: She Works Hard For The Money. When I was a kid, we'd tape songs off the radio or movies off the TV, when I was in college, we'd download bootlegs off the internet, and now pirating music, movies and television is easier than…

Messier Monday: Virgo’s brightest galaxy, M49 (Synopsis)

“We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” -Carl Sagan A galaxy very different from our own may hold the key to seeing what our far future looks like. If you've ever had the opportunity to see the Virgo cluster of galaxies, you probably think of a wonderland of galaxies littering the sky. Something like this, perhaps. Image credit: © 2014 Scott Rosen’s Astrophotography, via http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/index.php?c=113&p=512. But did…

Throwback Thursday: The Physics of Volcanic Lightning

“If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.” -Lee Trevino It’s one of the most beautiful (and terrifying) sights in the world. But what causes it? If the Earth is about to spew volcanic ash, smoke, soot and even lava from deep within its bowels at us, the least it could do is not electrocute us at the same time. Right? Image credit: Sigurður Hrafn Stefnisson of http://www.stefnisson.com/. Yet over 150 separate volcanic eruptions have been recorded with volcanic lightning accompanying them. But there are…

I didn't even have to get my hands dirty

That Egnor fellow believes that if minds are material, than "all of humanity's notions of moral value and culpability are nonsense"—like most creationists, his arguments collapse into a rather pointless fallacy, the argument from consequences. It's enough for me to just say that if I'm correct, then Egnor is the one who believes his morality is gone, not me. It's a theme running through his latest bloviation, that truth is irrelevant if ideas are a product of the brain, to which I have to say, "so what?" Anyway, I'm pleased to say that I don't need to waste time with the babbling Egnor, since…

Fatal fruit of an evil tree

This is a fascinating diagram from a zoology text of the 1930s—it's an illustration of the effects of reproduction rate on the frequency of subsets of the population, and the author was using it to justify eugenics. Up into the 1960s, he was advocating sterilization of the feeble-minded to improve the human race. Why, this guy must have been one of those evil Darwinists of the kind Michael Egnor, D. James Kennedy and the Discovery Institute deplore, and whose amoral ruthlessness those worthies have blamed on the teachings of evolution! Surprise: these sentiments were expressed by William…

Twitter Analytics? Inspect your Twitter feed for impact

You can now see what happens when you tweet something. Twitter has a web page that tells you how many "impressions" a tweet has, how many "Engagements" (any kind of click on your tweet) and, for convenience, the percentage of tweets with which your tweeps engaged. There are also summary graphs for engagement rate, link clicks, and retweets. There is also a graph that shows your daily frequency of impressions from your entire twitter feed and a few helpful summary statements such as your current day's impressions in relation to your 28 day average. If you click on a tweet, you get a graph…

Stupid people attend Liberty University

Falwell's funeral was yesterday, and apparently there were demonstrations — which seems highly inappropriate to me, now matter which side they were arguing — and a Liberty University student was arrested for bringing homemade bombs to the funeral. Bombs. To a funeral. There's just something insanely religious about that. Worse still was his excuse: "to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service." Yeah, people waving signs and chanting slogans at a funeral is tacky and disruptive, but you don't enhance the solemnity of the moment by setting off explosions. Replacing chanting with the…

Weekend Diversion: Enjoy your freedoms!

"Any red-blooded, flag-fearing American would love the M-320. Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it." -The Simpsons There are many things that your life has to offer as far as fun goes, and it's different for each person. For me, music is a huge part of it. Here's a double feature by Michael Chapman: Dewsbury Road / That Time of Night.So as my nation celebrates its independence and I chill out at a music festival, I hope you find something great to enjoy! And if you want a little astronomical eye candy in the meantime, here's looking into the heart of a…

Weekend Diversion: Teaching the Children

And you, of tender years, can't know the fears that your elders grew by... -Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young Here's CSNY's version of Teach Your Children from their third album (their second with Neil Young), 4 Way Street, although it was always the lyrics of the song that got to me. Like many people involved in college life, my semester is winding down, and finals week is upon us. My astronomy class just ended yesterday; little did I know that one of my students had made up a comic strip about me! (Click for full-size.) For the first time since High School when Rory McEvoy…

An Awesome Space Slideshow

Seed Magazine (which I've written for) has just put out a space slideshow: Traveling Through Time and Stars. Michael Benson gives an account -- in words and pictures -- of a journey outwards, from nearby stars to nebulae to other galaxies to clusters of galaxies. The pictures alone are worth having a look at. Beautiful? I don't know that that even begins to describe it, but it certainly helps give me a great perspective on what these different regions look like. The idea of zooming out and looking at things on larger and larger scales really appeals to me. In fact, I think the slideshow…

Please, MSNBC, can we stop now?

MSNBC has added Bret Stephens, climate denier formerly of the WSJ, lately of the NYT, to their list of commenters. Shame on them. Also, shame on Wikipedia and others for referring to Stephens as a journalist. He is no more a journalist than Anne Coulter. He is a commenter. (He's way better than Coulter, of course.) Prior related posts: Out of the gate, Bret Stephens punches the hippies, says dumb things Honestly, New York Times? You are entitled to publish all the opinions, but not to endorse your own facts! My letter to the New York Times Dear New York Times: Climate Change Is Real The…

Slow Posting Day

Sorry about the lack of new posts, but I'm tied up at the moment with legislative issues here in Michigan. The house bill that includes language opening the door to ID was passed by the house last week and sent to the Senate. We are awaiting today the release of a separate bill by the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, which may or may not include similar language. We don't know at this point which of the two bills will be the final bill or what the language will be, so we are preparing our strategy in the dark at the moment. In the meantime, I'm getting calls from the press and we'…