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My Neighborhood's Obamamobile

Obama in Manhattan, NYC. Image: GrrlScientist 18 September 2008 [larger view]. I was working on some writing when this .. erm, vehicle .. pulled up in front of my coffee shop to pick up a volunteer who was selling Obama buttons from a small portable table on the street corner. This is not the first time I've seen this vehicle driving around while wearing Obama decorations, and this serves to draw attention to the fact that I have never seen enthusiasm for the McCain/Palin ticket that is even vaguely similar to that shown for Obama/Biden. I live in a low-income, primarily Spanish-speaking…

Seattle Slew's Belmont Stakes Victory and Triple Crown Win

tags: Seattle Slew, horseracing, Triple Crown, streaming video Here's a video of Seattle Slew's victory in the Belmost Stakes in 1977 -- the speedy Seattle Slew was the first horse to win horseracing's Triple Crown while remaining undefeated. He also turned in a fast time, despite the crappy track conditions that he ran on. If Big Brown manages to win today's Belmont Stakes, he will become just the second racehorse to win the Triple Crown while remaining undefeated [3:04]. Seattle Slew was not expected to be a great racehorse, so he was sold at public auction -- the first Triple Crown winner…

I am Meeting Bill Thompson Tomorrow Afternoon

tags: bird watching, Bill Thompson Thanks to the good people at Houghton Mifflin Publishing House, I am meeting Bill Thompson, the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and author of several books, tomorrow afternoon. Needless to say, I am excited to meet Bill and to see Houghton Mifflin's offices, and to attach faces and voices with the names of those people who mail me their lovely beautiful books and email me appreciative and encouraging messages about my book reviews (Thanks, you guys!) Houghton Mifflin recently published a book by Bill Thompson, The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern…

Why would I go on a game show with a lose-lose premise?

What a crazy idea for a game show: a Turkish program is looking for 10 atheists to compete for the chance to be converted. What next, a show with healthy contestants competing for the chance to be infected with a disease, and the winner gets a long hospital stay? The game show producers give their bias away when they announce "We don't approve of anyone being an atheist". They're also planning to have a team of theologians to screen out religious people pretending to be godless so they can get a free trip to the holy site of their choice. Well, I'm not a fake atheist, but I'm wondering what…

Pelosi Is A More Effective Secretary of State Than Rice

Nancy Pelosi arrived in Syria today. So far, she has visited a centuries-old market district and the Omayyad mosque in Old Damascus, which is considered one of the most sacred sites in the capital. She will meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Wednesday, which makes her the highest-ranking American politician to meet with a Syrian leader in more than 12 years. The last time an American leader met a Syrian leader was in 1994, when President Clinton met Al-Assad's father, the late Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. The Syrian media are hailing her visit as a potential breakthrough in…

My kind of art gallery

A gallery in Glasgow has put out a Bible and suggested people write in it. The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow has invited art lovers to write their thoughts down in an open Bible on display as part of its Made in God's Image exhibition. Next to the Bible lie several pens with a note saying: "If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it". It's an interesting idea. I've signed a few bibles at people's request myself — I usually mark up the first page with the question, "Where are the squid?" — so I like the sentiment that people ought to be free to…

TEDTalks: Captain Charles Moore on the Seas of Plastic

tags: TEDTalks, plastic, recycling, Eastern Garbage Patch, North Pacific Gyre, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, albatross, Captain Charles Moore, streaming video Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he's drawing attention to the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas. [7:20] TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18…

Antarctica: Others Think I'd do a Helluva Job, Too

Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter, I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, we must write an essay explaining why we think we are the best choice, and solicit votes from the public. Whomever receives the most votes wins the job. But I am not the only one who thinks I…

Manhattan Mystery Flower

tags: NYC, Upper West Side, Lincoln Center, Manhattan, flowers, nature, image of the day Mystery Flower. Meadow sage, Salvia pratensis. Photographed in Manhattan's Lincoln Center in a planter in the middle of Broadway. Image: GrrlScientist, 16 June 2009 [larger view]. Salvia is the largest genus of plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, with approximately 900 species of shrubs, herbaceous perennials, and annuals. It is one of three genera commonly referred to as sage. The ornamental species are commonly referred to by their scientific name, Salvia. This genus is distributed throughout the…

Physically present at the Evolution 2008 meetings

I'm at the Evolution 2008 conference, but I'm too tired to appreciate it — the only sleep I got was a few fitful hours on the redeye from Las Vegas, so I'm seriously concerned that I may fall asleep in my session this afternoon. Greg Laden has been instructed to use a cattle prod on me if I slow down and start sounding like Ben Stein in my talk. It could happen. I'm having trouble remembering what my talk is supposed to be about right now. The slides will go up and the talk will flow out of my mouth, I hope. Speaking of Greg, at least he seems to be paying attention. He's got summaries up…

Worth reading: Older Americans, unplanned births, and workers' fights

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Two related pieces at ReportingonHealth.org: Rita Beamish, "Older Americans Act limps along at 50" and Ryan White, "Intensive program keeps elderly at home out of nursing home" Gillian B. White in The Atlantic: Unplanned Births: Another Outcome of Economic Inequality? Mike Paarlberg in the Washington City Paper: Workers' Fights ("Unpaid wages, uncompensated injuries, and unjust firings: A look at the margins of the DC labor market") Nikole Hannah-Jones in Politico Magzine: A Letter from Black America: Yes, we fear the police. Here's why. Erika Check…

Days On A Roof

My dad is building a guest house and an octagonal two-story sauna on the steep scarp from his house down to the sea. Things suddenly got very hurried, and I was called in as a building hand to help get the roof onto the sauna before winter. So in addition to a lot of travel, lately I have learned a few things about how to put an octagonal roof onto a two-story building. Crazy scaffolding... I'm filled with respect for the builders of the past, like the ones behind the Medieval churches that dot the Swedish countryside. We have power tools, spirit levels, boards in exact dimensions... They…

Pseudoarchaeology Talk in Uppsala on Thursday

Two days ago I talked about four Scandy writers of pseudoarchaeological books at the Kritisk masse conference in Oslo: Bob G Lind, Lennart Möller, Erling Haagensen and Thor Heyerdahl. Despite being largely composed of Norwegians, the audience seemed unperturbed by my unflattering views of Heyerdahl's archaeological contributions. He is a national hero and the museum celebrating his achievements is (tellingly) just a stone's throw from the Viking ship museum in Oslo. Them Norwegians like their maritime identity! But I don't think the country's skeptics are being fooled, as shown i.a. by my…

Work or Play? An Unusual Stone Object

Here's a funny find. My buddy Tobias Bondesson sent me these pics of a gneiss or granite object he's found, measuring 30 by 28 mm in diameter and 20 mm high. The find spot is near Lee church in northern Jutland (the current stone structure there goes back to shortly after AD 1100), and the metal detector finds go back at least to the 8th century. What do you think it is? As Tobias points out, the shape and dimensions are exactly what you'd expect from a Viking Period gaming piece. But it's the wrong material. Those are almost exclusively made of bone, antler or horse teeth. I have an idea…

Stone Age Dildo Found in Sweden

Motala in Ãstergötland has been recognised in recent years as one of the richest Mesolithic sites in Scandinavia north of the current and former Danish provinces. Excavations in waterlogged sediment along River Motala ström have produced great numbers of bone and wood objects that have rarely been preserved elsewhere. Most are harpoon and leister points, but now a bone dildo (a boner?) has joined the growing collection. Measuring twelve by two centimetres, its size is perhaps not very impressive, and there are many non-dildoish uses for which it may have been intended. But without doubt…

Towards an Archaeology of Picnics (Unwillingly)

Spent the day metal-detecting a lovely high-profile site in Uppland for a colleague. It's turf-covered and a popular haunt of campers and picnic parties. My next detector is definitely going to be one that can differentiate between aluminium and precious metals. I hate aluminium. I took up 111 objects and almost all of them were made of that accursed metal: mainly pull tabs, bottle tops and crumbly nasty wads of foil, but also a tent peg and sundry other things. The oldest find was a 1934 coin. I was a little touched to find a 1980s scout badge, just like the ones I used to wear. And even…

Weekend Fun

This past weekend was full of fun duties. The only thing I did exclusively for fun was read a pretty depressing novel about slavery, U.K. LeGuin's Powers (2007). Represented the Swedish Skeptics off-stage at the Nordic Conjuring Championship in Uppsala, as our organisation sponsored the event. I was surprised to see different competing magicians do the same tricks, and then realised that of course there are fashions in that too. The winner was Reggie Simon, an excellent performer originally from the US, whose act contained wry references to that country's racism and gun-nuttery. Directed the…

French Soft Drink Promises to Change Your Sexual Orientation

Christian fundamentalists like to believe that homosexuality is an illness that can -- and should -- be cured. The factual belief is contradicted by a solid scientific consensus, and the value judgement is widely considered to be a repressive holdover from the Bronze Age. The makers of the French orange-based soft drink Orangina seem to agree with the fundies' unscientific belief that homosexuality can be induced post-natally in a fully formed individual. They, however, are certainly not homophobes. On the contrary, in a recent major ad campaign they invite consumers to use Orangina to "Wake…

I Axed My Heat Pump and Now It Works Again

There was a lot more ice in the heat-pump box than I had thought, a 10 cm cake covering its floor, but getting rid of it proved easy. All I needed was a screwdriver and a small axe. The hot air gun wasn't much use. I turned off the power feed, took the hood off the thing, removed the rotor and hacked away the ice, taking care not to bash the fine heat-exchange lamelles lining the walls. The ice was laminated from the many defrosting cycles that had built it up, and it fractured into large easily manageable chunks. After reassembling the box I hacked away most of the remaining ice on the…

A vision for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?

As I've argued before, carbon taxes are better than carbon trading because they are simpler, there is less bureaucracy, less room for political interference, and less room for a parasitic class to form. In witness of which, David Hone's article about the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)'s "vision". Well, that was a bit short, wasn't it (I couldn't be bothered to do any more). Now I remember a rather silly recent article at RC, Recycling Carbon? by Tony Patt of ETH Zürich, which says We know, from two decades of social-science research, that [carbon tax or cap-and-trade] do…

Godless

So, I was down the pub (the Castle) and after a few pints the conversation turned to religion, and the assertion that England (joint with some other country we couldn't name; I went for Iceland, Andy for Denmark) was the most godless in the world (in some unclear sense involving religious belief) and that the least godly city in England was Cambridge, joint with... Brighton I think. Bit of a bland subject I know, but does anyone else have anywhere less godly to propose? Not, of course, in the sense of god-forsaken, we all know that is (picks random city that no-one likes). Just to keep things…

Tesco to put carbon scores on goods

"Tesco to put carbon scores on goods" says The Torygraph. Sounds like a good idea in principle. Do go on ...The labels - which will be put on 30 products, including tomatoes, potatoes, orange juice, light bulbs and washing detergent - will detail how many grams of CO2 were created in their production, packaging, distribution and disposal. Well, that still sounds good. Whats the downside? However, the scheme has come under fire from rival retailers, consumer groups and academics, who say shoppers - already bombarded by complex information on packaging - will be further confused. Hmmm. Sounds…

The official nutters list!

Yes, its now available (2017 update: the NP fails to pass the test of time, and the b*st*rds block the waybackmachine; this is an archive of what I believe to be substatntially the same content drivel): 100% self-certified. Mostly its the obvious suspects, lots of Emeritus, and the familiar trick of puffing up your CV with a reference to the IPCC gold standard; in many cases "IPCC expert reviewer" is a credential. Remember folks this doesn't mean that the IPCC endorse you or accept your reviews. There are some sad items in there too: Reid Bryson; Freeman Dyson. And then there are the funny…

Return of the dead: global cooling

I assume this is all mostly a matter of stupidity and mischief making rather than any concerted attack, but the 1971 R+S science paper makes an unexpected comeback. Tim Lambert has the story; Lubos falls for the lies (I'm being a bit inaccurate there: Lubos doesn't fall for it, he jumps in with enthusiasm and ignorance). Whats the point of all this? The usual mixture I suppose: you have to fill newspapers with something; that its wrong doesn't really bother anyone; that its misinformation serves the usual purposes. And it does in part so serve: I've just had to remove As a research associate…

What do we learn from Glaciers in the Highest Altitudes In The Alps?

You couldn't get a more perfect example of desperation than: At the recent International Symposium on "Landform - structure, evolution, process control", University of Bonn, Germany, June 7-10, 2007, that I attended, there was evidence presented of the retreat of all of the glaciers in the Alps. However, thanks to CCNet and Benny Peiser for alerting me to a paper which provides evidence that one glacial area in these mountains is not retreating. [1] [2] And the one area that isn't retreating? That is also very revealing: its the highest glaciers. And why aren't they retreating? For the…

Nunatak

A reader enquires the right-wing blogosphere and US media is reporting that Al Gore planned a rock concert in Antarctica in July, but when contacting BAS was told that it's mid-winter and a bad time to make the attempt (e.g. this). Well its no secret that What must surely be the coolest gig in this summer's Live Earth concerts takes place at the British Antarctic Survey's (BAS) Rothera Research Station. On 7 July the science team's indie-rock house band, Nunatak* will debut in the global event that features over 100 of the world's top musical acts. Concerts from all 7 continents will raise…

Joint science academies' statement on growth and and climate protectionresponsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency

It is important that the 2007 G8 Summit is addressing the linked issues of energy security and climate change. These are defining issues of our time, and bring together the themes of growth and responsibility in a way that highlights our duties to future generations. In 2005, the Academies issued a statement emphasising that climate change was occurring and could be attributed mostly to human activities, and calling for efforts to tackle both the causes of climate change and the inevitable consequences of past and unavoidable future emissions. Since then the IPCC has published the Working…

Mike Carey Writes Well

Aard super-regular Birger Johansson very kindly sent me a bunch of supernatural detective novels by Mike Carey, the Felix Castor series. I'm on the second one now (from 2006) and enjoying it a lot. The stories are a bit too long and meandering for my taste, but I love Carey's dry wit and fine grasp of the language. I'm pretty sure he's studied Raymond Chandler carefully. Have a look at these bits as a sample: "Meanwhile, three miles away at the Scrubs, Saint Michael's church was invaded by some entity so powerful that just being close to it poisoned the minds and souls of everyone in the…

Phew, Salami Is Not Spiced Adipocere

Adipocere / corpse wax: a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. ... a crumbly, waxy, water-insoluble material consisting mostly of saturated fatty acids. Depending on whether it was formed from white or brown body fat, adipocere is grayish white or tan in color. ... The transformation of fats into adipocere occurs best in the absence of oxygen in a cold and humid environment, such as in wet ground or mud at the bottom of a lake or a sealed casket ... Wikipedia Salami: Salami are cured in warm, humid conditions…

California sues governor over global warming

News just in... California is suing its own governor over his Hummer... no, of course not. But California sues carmakers over global warming. California sued six of the world's largest automakers over global warming on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. It also comes less than a month after California lawmakers adopted the nation's first global warming law…

pgp / gpg

I have a load of files encrypted with pgp (2.6.2i, since you ask). But the machine at BAS this runs off is soon to be turned off, so it seems I need to upgrade to gpg instead. So... in a break from climate, can I ask the security gurus out there (are any of them reading this?)... Can I read pgp in gpg? (I tried it a year or so ago, and failed on importing my old keys into gpg: just tried again: died on some message about missing self-signature) Otherwise I have to decrypt 200-odd files and re-encrypt them as gpg. Not too tedious. Except I have a few others out on the web in odd locations I…

Ebba During 1937-2007

Photograph from Per Dahlberg's blog. Woah, I don't like the attrition rate among my colleagues right now. Magnus at Testimony of the Spade informs me that professor emerita Ebba During died on Tuesday 15 May after a battle with illness. Ebba was an osteologist, which means that like all Swedish bone people she combined the specialities of physical anthropology and animal osteology. For years and years, Ebba taught osteology on the snug premises in Ulriksdal outside Stockholm made available by the archaeologist-king Gustavus VI Adolphus. Her manner was kindly and unassuming. Yet her published…

Happy LHC Day!

Just wanted to be one of the voices acknowledging day one of CERN's Large Hadron Collider. I know very little about it, but being a blogger I don't let that get in the way of talking about it! You can read about it on Wikipedia, The Source of All That is Knowable. Two interesting factoids I learned from a Science Friday podcast: 1. it shoots 100's of billions of protons at a time, thousands of times per second and accelerates them to 99.999999% o the speed of light! Sounds pretty fast. 2. it will not create something that swallows the earth or destroys the whole universe because the kind of…

Colony Collapse Disorder linked to pesticides

The continued mysterious death of honeybees, (36% loss of all colonies in the US this year alone) is now being linked to pesticides. There are also typically suspicious shenanigans from the EPA involved: So why did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 grant an "emergency" exemption allowing increased use of Gaucho -- typically invoked during a major infestation -- when only a few beetles were found in blueberries? Why did the agency also grant a "conditional" registration for its close relative, Pancho, allowing the chemical on the market with only partial testing? And why is the…

Live Chat with Mark Lynas

For anyone interested, I would like to share an email I just received: I just wanted to remind you that we're running a live chat today at 2:30pm eastern. with Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Plane on Gather.com. His book is the basis of National Geographic's upcoming special Six Degrees Could Change The World. Who: Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet. What: Exclusive Web Chat on Gather.com When: February, 4th 2008 from 2:30-3:30pm Where: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977246681&nav=Nam… - click this link to…

Now This is Partisan Hackery

If you want to see partisan hackery on spectacular display, you have to see this post by Hugh Hewitt spinning the Foley situation. He's taking the tried and true tactic of blaming it all on the media and changing the subject: The Washington Times wants Speaker Hastert to resign. To do so would be to capitulate to Democratic-activist-induced and MSM-abetted hysteria. Not only should Hastert not resign, he should use every opportunity to swing back hard at a MSM deeply compromised by its ideological extremism and a Democratic Party committed to retreat and defeat in Iraq and fecklessness in…

Alabama Democrats Tell Darby to Get Lost

From the AP: The Alabama Democratic Party Executive Committee wants Larry Darby, whose radical views include the belief that the Holocaust did not happen, to stay out of future Democratic Party primaries. The executive committee passed a resolution Saturday telling Darby, who lost a race for the party's nomination for attorney general, that "he is not welcome in the Alabama Democratic Party." Darby, former director of the Atheist Law Center in Montgomery, responded by saying the vote shows that the state party's leadership is "intellectually and morally bankrupt." Being called intellectually…

Record Month for Dispatches

In reviewing the google analytics stats for this blog, I find that July was a record month with 173,024 hits. That's an average of 5581 hits per day, and that's even with the long 4th of July weekend that had lower than normal hits. The weekends are always slower, with around 3000 hits a day, so during the week we're averaging around 7000 hits a day. I never imagined when I started this blog that it would ever get anywhere near that level of readership. So I want to thank all of you for your interest in what I do and for helping to make Dispatches from the Culture Wars a success. A large part…

Here Comes the Trivialization

Prediction #1 has come true. Here's Paul Nelson on why yesterday's loss in Kansas doesn't matter: Once upon a time, there were a whole bunch of people who thought that what really mattered in thinking hard about design and evolution were state science standards. And school board elections. Along came a 15 year old kid who loved science, read a lot, thought for herself, and generally saw the adults around her as missing the point. "As if," she said to the cat sleeping at her feet. Then she smiled and went back to her web browsing. The End. Unfortunately, the whole bunch of people who think…

Florence King vs Ann Coulter

Florence King, longtime National Review contributor and one of my all time favorite writers, has unsheathed her tongue and taking a lashing to Ann Coulter. It's a joy to behold. I like this paragraph in particular: At her best, Coulter writes well, but the chief source of her success is that she is a perfect match for the American ideal: smart as a whip but dumb as a post, educated but not learned, sexy but not sensuous, all at the same time. She would not hesitate to choose a sledgehammer over a stiletto because her instincts would pull her back from what the 18th century called "demolishing…

Specter's Compromise, Part 2

As a follow up on Specter's new bill (see full text here), I suggest this post by Orin Kerr and this post by Jack Balkin. Both point out that not only does the bill not tighten the oversight on the administration's domestic spying efforts, it actually loosens it. Balkin calls it a sham and that's exactly what it is. From Balkin: At first glance, Specter's bill looks like a moderate and wise compromise that expands the President's authority to engage in electronic surveillance under a variety of Congressional and judicial oversight procedures. But read more closely, it actually turns out to be…

Bush Desecrates the American Flag?

Yep. And there are pictures. In Livonia, Michigan he signed his autograph on a bunch of American flags at a political rally, here's the picture: That was from 2003. It seems he did the same thing in Austria recently. What does the US Code say about this sort of thing? TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > § 8 § 8. Respect for flag (g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature. He defaced the American flag on foreign soil! It's a good thing the Senate hasn't voted on that…

Best Ribs Ever

It's been a while since I wrote about one of my great passions, BBQ. This weekend I made the best ribs I've ever made with a few minor little experimental adjustments. I tend not to follow the same rules every time, I like to try different things and see how they work out. A great source for such ideas is any book by Steven Raichlen, three of which I ordered a couple months ago. Anyway, for any BBQ afficianados out there, here's what I did that turned out so perfect. First, I soaked the wood chips (hickory) in red wine instead of water. This changed the flavor in subtle ways. Second, I added…

Samuel Chen Joins the Smear Campaign

Just when you thought all of the clowns had exited the ID car to compare Judge Jones to Hitler and Stalin, Samual Chen of Baylor jumps out of the trunk to add his 2 cents to the fun. Only he's even more blunt about it. He cites the exact same four bad guys from Time's previous lists - ignoring, of course, all the good guys they've honored like Ghandi, Churchill and Martin Luther King - and says: Either way, congratulations to Judge Jones on joining a long line of famous, or infamous, leaders. Hopefully the dictatorship he aims to set up in education falls like the dicatorships set up in…

DI in the Dover Aftermath

The Seattle Times has an article about the Discovery Institute and its struggles in the wake of the Dover trial. Prompt the whining from the DI Media Complaints Division in 3...2...1. The most interesting thing in the article, to me at least, was this statement about Bruce Chapman: Chapman said he asked Discovery fellows not to testify in the Dover case. But Scott Minnich, a microbiologist, and Michael Behe, a biochemistry professor, did and were asked in court who they thought the designer was. That actually answers a question that Wes and I had wondered about. We know that 3 DI fellows were…

Solomon: Expert on Sexual Purity

I came across this column on Agape Press called The Serpent of Porn and had to laugh when it began with a Biblical lesson about the importance of avoiding sexual temptations from - of all people - Solomon! Solomon intimately understood how powerful sexual temptation can be for a young man. It was with him in mind that he wrote the fifth chapter of Proverbs. "My son, give attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding .... For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech" (Proverbs 5:1-3). Yes, folks, he's actually turning to Solomon for advice on…

Will Repko: Superhero?

So I'm perusing the MSU debate team webpage, which includes lots of pictures and stories of their national championship victory, and I come across this picture: That's the coach, and my old friend, Will Repko. Why is he dressed like that? I have no idea. I thought about calling him to find out, but frankly I figure any backstory that leads to him wearing that costume that I might make up is bound to be more entertaining than the real story. So for the moment, I'm assuming that the process that led to this involves large amounts of alcohol and a dare. Either way, this picture will not be…

The first rule of foo camp is … you do not talk about foo camp

Mainly because you don't know what foo camp is all about. Yes, I have arrived in lovely Sunnyvale, safe and sound, ready for my alter ego, Tyler Nerden, to face the google geeks. While I was hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, what did I miss? I just caught Behe on the Colbert Report, and yowza, what a clown. Einstein's theories were all about putting limits on Newton? And Behe is the guy who's putting limits on Darwin? Can we just say he's an idiot and be done with it now? And speaking of dismissive one-liners, what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp?…

Career Options for Theorists

As noted by several people, most recently JoAnne Hewett, one of the players at the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event is a Ph.D. physicist: Michael Binger, recently of SLAC. So, I guess we need to expand the list of non-academic physics careers to include "professional poker player." I'm not sure how Prof. Katz left it off his list. JoAnne quotes from his bio: Michael Binger hopes to continue doing research in physics without having to run the rat-race of getting a job and impressing all the right people as he puts it. A win here at the World Series of Poker Main Event would…

Useless Book Review

The New York Times offers a review of several books on science and religion today, including a new screed by Dawkins, Daniel Dennett's book from a little while back, and several books attempting to find common ground between science and religion, by Francis Collins, Owen Gingerish, Joan Roughgarden, and E. O. Wilson. This is probably in the top ten least useful book reviews you'll read this year. The problem isn't with the subject matter, though I'm sure some at ScienceBlogs will object to the very concept of all save the Dawkins and Dennett. The problem is that they're trying to talk about…