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Is Lott like Bellesiles or like Ellis?

Lindgren has updated his report. Main changes are the inclusion of a reply from John Lott and a dissection of Lott's new "Did I say three months? I meant one month. Yeah, that's the ticket!" claim. Lots more people have blogged on this: Glenn Reynolds, Pejman Yousefzadeh, skippy, Ken Parish, Roger Ailes (twice), Atrios and Guy Cabot. And Marie Gryphon, Julian Sanchez, Jane Galt, Kevin Drum and Thomas M. Spencer have updates or new comments. Glenn Reynolds and Thomas Spencer mention Bellesiles, but from opposite sides. Glenn states that "Lott's critics want, rather too…

That guy must be crazy

New York Times columnist David Brooks wants to explain away the actions of Jared Loughner, the gunman that shot 20 people at a political event as the isolated actions of a deranged psycho: All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may be suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia. The vast majority of schizophrenics are not violent, and those that receive treatment are not violent. But as Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist, writes in his book, "The Insanity Offense," about 1 percent of the seriously mentally…

Scientific knowledge - getting closer to the right answer

The "Science and the Public" story of the year might just be Arsenic using bacteria. Certainly, Alex's critique has been the most popular post on this blog since we started and has received quite a bit of attention from other bloggers as well as in conventional media. This might be a teachable moment in science communication, but even though it's clear that this wasn't handled particularly well, it's hard to see how things can be done better in the future. Heather's follow-up post is a great summary of how science works in the real world, but I think it also illustrates a fundamental…

Earthquake Prediction Just as Tantalizingly Close as Ever

There's an article in last Friday's issue of Nature describing some changes in the rocks near the San Andreas Fault that occurred in the hours before two small earthquakes. Here's the BBC's writeup; for those of you who can sneak behind the Nature paywall, the original article is here. A similar study was published sixteen years ago, not in Nature but in Science. The first author on the 1992 Science paper, Paul Silver, was also the second author on this week's Nature paper. While the recent study measured stress changes along a fault using precise instrumentation installed in a pair of very…

What if...?

Synthetic biology is still a new field, and victories are small and incremental. Much of the promise and peril of synthetic biology still lies in the future: genetic devices made to order, computer aided genome design, organisms specially constructed for specific industrial purposes. Will we use this biological technology for good--new more affordable and accessible drugs, better vaccines to emerging diseases, and clean energy--or evil--new deadly pathogens and immortal super soldiers? I think it's safe to say that almost everyone hopes that we'll get all of the good stuff without any of the…

23andMe raises prices, splits its health and ancestry analyses

Added in edit: for superb analysis of the announcement from multiple angles, you should also check out Dan Vorhaus' three incisive articles on Genomics Law Report. Personal genomics company 23andMe announced yesterday on its blog (and in an email to customers) of impending changes to its product line. Until now 23andMe has offered only two products: its $399 full scan, and a $99 Research Revolution product that offers limited functionality and a focus on common disease risk prediction. There are two major components of the altered product line. Firstly, customers will now be able to…

First ever association study using whole genome sequences

New-technology DNA sequencing provider Complete Genomics will provide near-complete genome sequences of 100 individuals to the Institute for Systems Biology, driving the first ever association study for a complex trait using whole-genome sequencing. Here's the press release, and GenomeWeb has some additional information. This is pretty exciting stuff: The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and Complete Genomics Inc. announced today that they are embarking on a large-scale human genome sequencing study of Huntington`s disease (HD). ISB has engaged Complete Genomics to sequence 100 genomes,…

Chinese summer camp to offer genetic tests for IQ, athletic performance, emotional control

CNN reports: At the Chongqing Children's Palace, experts are hoping to revolutionize child-rearing with the help of science. About 30 children aged 3 to 12 years old and their parents are participating in a new program that uses DNA testing to identify genetic gifts and predict the future. The test is conducted by the Shanghai Biochip Corporation. Scientists claim a simple saliva swab collects as many as 10,000 cells that enable them to isolate eleven different genes. By taking a closer look at the genetic codes, they say they can extract information about a child's IQ, emotional control,…

Allowing children to be born with severe disease is morally equivalent to child abuse, round 2

A couple of weeks ago I pointed to an article by bioethicist Jacob Appel arguing that genetic screening for severe disease mutations should be mandatory for parents undergoing IVF, and that not doing so is tantamount to child abuse. Today the same theme is taken up by New Scientist biology editor Michael Le Page, but extending the process to all parents-to-be via carrier testing: All would-be parents should be offered screening to alert them to any genetic disorders they risk passing on to their children. Those at risk should then be offered IVF with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (IVF-…

23andMe moving into clinical diagnostics?

Steve Murphy is up in arms about a recent email from 23andMe to its customers advertising the use of genetic variants on its V2 chip to predict individual risk of statin-induced myopathy and breast cancer. Of course, Steve does have a strong financial interest in 23andMe staying as far away as possible from the area of clinical diagnostics, but I share his unease here. So far personal genomics companies have by and large done their best to steer clear of being seen as "doing medicine", but this move would seem to put 23andMe explicitly over that line. In the case of the breast cancer…

President Obama Begins to Reverse Bush Era Political Interference in Science

Today was a great day for science in the Executive Branch. Firstly, President Barack Obama (finally!) lifted George W. Bush's August 2001 restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research in an executive order entitled "Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells": The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry, to expand NIH support for the exploration of human stem cell research, and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the…

China Behaving Badly

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Chinese ship carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe that was turned away thanks primarily to the actions of the South African dockworkers' union. A news story from the Mail & Guardian today gives a pretty good indication of just how those weapons might have been used if they had made it to their intended destination: Zimbabwe's army is supplying militants with weapons to intimidate voters to ensure that Robert Mugabe wins a possible run-off in the presidential election, Human Rights Watch said. In a statement released late on Tuesday, it said military…

Tom Holder of Pro-Test Takes His Scientific Activism Experience to the US

Via Americans for Medical Progress comes news that Tom Holder of Pro-Test has started his own pro-animal research organization in the US, Speaking of Research. Here's the full press release: The tide could be turning against animal rights activists who demonstrate on campuses around the nation. Today marks the launch of Speaking of Research (SR), a student outreach organization, which aims to rally students and faculty in support of lifesaving medical research using animals. Speaking of Research seeks to challenge animal rights dominance of the issue by participating in talks and debates on…

Texans: Vote "Yes" on Proposition 15

On November 6th (and now during early voting) Texans have the chance to vote on a variety of amendments to the Texas Constitution. One of these is Proposition 15: The constitutional amendment requiring the creation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and authorizing the issuance of up to $3 billion in bonds payable from the general revenues of the state for research in Texas to find the causes of and cures for cancer. The full text of the resolution as passed in May by the Texas House and Senate can be read here and additional information is available here. Upon…

Barack Obama: Not Waffling on Cuba

Although he took some flack for a similar stance in last month's CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential Debate (see video at bottom of post), Barack Obama has an opinion piece published in The Miami Herald today in which he stresses the need for bilateral talks with Cuba and promises to "grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island." The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways. U.S. policy must be built around empowering the Cuban…

New Poll Gives Reason to be Optimistic for the Future

The results of a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll were released today, and they by and large indicate that young adults today are more progressive (based on stances on individual issues and on personal identification) than their parents' generation. Although this liberalization has been a general tendency in America (and fits the stereotype of the idealistic liberal youth), some may have worried that the rise of the religious right over the last few decades was indicative of a reversal of this trend. That's not the case. The pollsters interviewed 659 Americans (giving a margin of error of…

The World's Best Functional Food?

Source. Watching the "Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - On Stranger Tides" this weekend with my children reminded me that pursing a "fountain of youth" is a timeless tale that plays out in our lives in many ways. For example, you see this everyday in our grocery stores, in the form of "functional foods." Cereals promise to lower your cholesterol, milk to improve brain function, vitamin-enhanced water to boost your immune system. Not surprisingly, it is a big business - US sales in 2009 exceeded $37 billion. Manufacturers have become adept at tip toeing towards the point at which their product…

The Huffington Post Virus?

Note to readers: This report of a supposed viral pandemic is entirely fictional but not inconceivable, and is for entertainment purposes only (depending upon your sensibilities.) A new viral pandemic may be on its way. To date, physical symptoms have been benign. While the method of transmission, origin and therapies are as yet unknown, symptoms are consistent with a new viral strain including mild persistent fever and in some cases delusions and inexplicable behavior directed - oddly enough - towards media outlets. Susceptibility appears to be universal; no resistant individuals have…

Scientists and the News Media: Arsenic-Based Life Forms a Case Study?

Scientists including the news media in the process of discovery is a volatile affair, as we have all witnessed recently. My fellow bloggers on ScienceBlogs, We Beasties, discussed the role of bloggers and scientists in the process of the NASA scientists announcing their discovery of "arsenic-based life forms". Generally speaking, as a scientist I have always been bothered by the idea of a press release to announce a scientific discovery before I had an opportunity to carefully review the study myself. Typically, a friend or neighbor would say "Hey, did you hear about the discovery of…

NBC’s Biggest Loser: The Aroma of Cupcakes and The Vagaries of Appetite

NBC photo Contestants on NBC's "Biggest Loser" In Woody Allen’s Sleeper, Miles awakens after a 200-year sleep, to a world in which healthy food choices have become topsy-turvy: Dr. Melik: (listing items Miles had requested for breakfast): "... wheat germ, organic honey, and... Tiger's Milk." Dr. Aragon: "Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties." Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?" Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know…

Welcome!

Welcome to the new home for The Thoughtful Animal! Welcome especially to new readers! To the old readers, I hope you'll enjoy the new place. Nothing big will change; but now I've got better technical support, a family of Sciblings (go check out their blogs!), a more powerful interface, and hopefully a more pleasant experience for you! Take a few minutes to check out the site. You can read a little about me, and if you'd like you can peruse the old blog. I shall miss the old place, but am very excited to be joining the Borg Scienceblogs, and all my new Sciblings. Special thanks go to Dr. Isis…

Why your friends' privacy settings matter more than yours

In the age of life-casting offered by Google Glass, you'll need to pick your friends wisely. As the first of Google's goggles are dispatched, we're starting to see serious conversations arise about the implications of always-on feeds beaming every moment onto the cloud.  I've seen a few articles expressing alarm at the idea we'll be under constant surveillance by the people around us, and the necessary etiquette frameworks that will need to be hashed out as this kind of device becomes more commonplace.  Seattle's 5 Point Cafe became the first to ban the goggles, although this was more a savvy…

What's the point of the Golden Duck award for quackery?

So you might have seen that Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who first linked the MMR vaccine to autism, has been given a "Golden Duck"  award for "lifetime achievement in quackery".  The tweet that accompanied it in my feed asked simply "what is the purpose of this award?", and I had to scratch my head too.  Just what is the point?   I don't really gel with the concept of the award itself, for a variety of reasons. Most obviously, it encapsulates the kind of negative behaviour within the skeptic movement that I've taken issue with in the past. It's far too easy for something like this…

Science in the Schools: Donors Choose!

Every year the science blogging community organizes the "Science Bloggers for Students challenge", a month-long competition between science blogs to see which raise do the most to help low-income science classrooms through the DonorsChoose.org website. Through Donors Choose, teachers can go and make requests for specific supplies or materials that they otherwise can't afford. I look back on my elementary, middle, and high school science classes, and my most vivid (and fondest) memories were of the hands-on demos and experiments that we did in class, of the books that we were given to read (…

#PLOSGenetics: The Case for Junk DNA

This is the paper to read: Palazzo & Gregory's The Case for Junk DNA. It clearly and logically lays out the complete argument from evidence and theory for the thesis that most of the genome is junk. It's not revolutionary or radical, though: the whole story is based on very fundamental population genetics and molecular biology, and many decades of accumulated observations. And once you know a little bit of those disciplines -- you don't need to be a genius with a great depth of understanding -- the conclusion is both obvious and in some ways, rather trivial. Here's that conclusion: For…

Still here, for now

Well, well, well. After spending the day dismantling and rebuilding my lab (which, to my slight surprise, was actually super fun), I return to some good news (relative to the bad news that's been flying around here over the last couple days). 1. The Pepsi blog has been shuttered. Here's the official notice from SEED/SB founder and CEO, Adam Bly. Note that he asks for comments and seems to be reading them. Head on over and participate in the conversation. 2. Carl Zimmer and Dr. Skyskull are both maintaining lists of where to find those who left. (Thanks, dudes!) 3. Aforementioned founder and…

Support Science Education in Ohio

On November 7, the citizens of the State of Ohio will be voting a bunch of things, just like all Americans. One of the things they'll be voting for are seats on the State Board of Education (see Ed's discussion here). In one of the races, an anti-science incumbent, Deborah Owens-Fink, is running against a pro-science challenger, Tom Sawyer. Owens-Fink has been far more successful at raising money than Sawyer. To donate money to Sawyer's campaign visit here. More about the push for donations can be found below the fold. Taken from EvolDir: Dear Fellow Scientists, In 2003, our community pulled…

Is Your City a Sports Haven or Sports Hell?

It's Saturday on the second weekend of the college football season. Tomorrow (Sunday) marks the opening of the NFL season (okay, the season really kicked off Thursday night). Also, we're hitting the home stretch of the major league baseball season, and the playoffs are just around the corner. With all of that in mind, this marks a good time to ask, How good is my city when it comes to sports? If you live in Cleveland, you don't need any scientific study to tell you you've suffered through some miserable seasons. But what about the rest of the United States and Canada? The blog Urban Sports…

Rejecting the Neutral Model

Last September, Bruce Lahn and colleagues published a couple of papers on the evolution of two genes responsible for brain development in humans (ASPM and Microcephalin). A group led by Sally Otto published a criticism of the analysis performed by Lahn's group in last week's issue of Science (JP has written a good summary on GNXP). Lahn and colleagues issued an excellent response to that criticism. The original papers on ASPM and Microcephalin argued that the patterns of polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium at the two loci were inconsistent with our current understanding of demographic…

It's Paul Zed Myers's Birthday

Today marks the birthday of our venerable godfather (er, atheist-father?) here at ScienceBlogs, PZ Myers. I am honored and grateful that I have been invited to PZ Myers's . . . birthday . . . on the day of PZ Myers's birthday. And I hope that his first post be a cephalopod post. In appreciation of the blogfather, Grrlscientist is staging a surprise party -- a blogasm of posts -- for Doc Myers. My contribution can be found below the fold. I'm hoping that a list of all of the birthday posts will be compiled at Living the Scientific Life. Shhh! Quick, hide behind that tree, the Lamarckian…

Say It Ain't So, Paul

Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University, has a commentary (I believe it requires a subscription) in this week's issue of Cell. Within his essay he lays out some of the impediments to biomedical research in America. He starts by explaining current funding problems and suggests that smaller research groups may be able to deal with budget cuts. Larger groups could be form through collaborations between the smaller groups when projects demand such interdisciplinary approaches. He also discusses problems with science education and the reluctance of researchers to communicate with the…

Google+ for the Blogger and Researcher

I'm on Google+. After a couple days of playing with it, I haven't quite identified what it is for, or at least how I'm going to use it differently from twitter or facebook, but so far I am generally impressed - it's easy, intuitive, and fast. It also allows you a level of selective privacy that - while possible to achieve - is very clunky on Facebook. It only took me 10 minutes on the web interface and another 10 minutes after downloading the Android app to figure out how it all worked. And Google+ is already far better integrated into the mobile user experience than Facebook is (though this…

A Sizzling Hypocrisy

Randy Olson left a career as a marine biologist (Titleist!) to become a film maker. His first feature project was Flock of Dodos, a movie I enjoyed. His second film is Sizzle, a movie reviewed by lots of ScienceBloggers a couple weeks ago. The gist: a lot of ScienceBloggers didn't like sizzle. Neither did a reviewer for Nature (doi:10.1038/454279a). I did not request a review copy of the movie because I don't like to diverge much from the main themes of evolgen: evolutionary genetics, manatees, and the douchebag who writes this blog. But some of the recent discussion surrounding Sizzle has…

Gene Expression Differences between Populations

Phenotypic differences between populations, species, or any other taxonomic classification can be attributed to genetic and environmental causes. The genetic differences can be divided into sequence divergence of transcribed regions, copy number divergence, and expression divergence. These categories are hardly independent -- expression divergence results from the evolution of the protein coding sequences of transcription factors and cis regulatory regions of transcribed sequences. An article in press in Nature Genetics (news item here) reports on differences in expression of 4,197 genes…

The Dumb Polack Jokes Write Themselves

Nature has published a correspondence from Maciej Giertych, a Polish biologist, defending his view that evolutionary biology is bullshit. He's actually striking back at Nature for this news item on creationism in Poland. Long story short, the League of Polish Families (LPR), a group led by Roman Giertych (Maciej Giertych's son), has been pushing for the inclusion of creationism in the science curriculum of Polish schools. Maciej Giertych did not like how he and his fellow creationists were portrayed in the Nature article. He decided to defend himself in a letter to Nature, despite the fact…

Those sneaky gingers pop up everywhere

I have a brother with red hair. I also have a son with red hair. Once upon a time, my beard and mustache contained many red hairs among the dominant browns. If you've ever wondered how these gingers appear all over the place, Petra Haak-Bloem offers a good explanation (although it needs some editing: how many different ways can they spell pheomelanin?). The shade of hair color is determined by the amount of melanin, or pigment, in the hair. Your DNA not only encodes what kind of pigment you have, but also how much of it. “For white people the shades are dependent on two sorts of melanin:…

Calling all skeptics...Andrew Wakefield in New York City

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Since it is a holiday here in the States, I'm chilling out and recovering. I'll try to be back tomorrow, but, worst case scenario, I'll be back for sure on Tuesday. (Monday just so happens to be a holiday, too, this year. Gotta have those three day weekends.) In the meantime, here's a little something you might want to know about, particularly if you live in New York City.. The skeptics in Chicago did a truly excellent job countering what fortunately turned out to be not much of an anti-vaccine "protest." Now here's a chance for NYC skeptics (both belonging to…

Evolution of Birds: New Evidence for Foraging Behavior

Birds evolved during the Mesozoic, during the various "Ages" of the dinosaurs, as a subset of those dinosaurs. Many researchers believe that these early birds were different from their then very close dinosaur cousins because of their flight adaptations, and some have linked this idea to flight-based or tree- based foraging. Today, most birds fly (counting by species) and their flight is linked to their primary dietary adaptation. Some birds actually feed on the wing, while others fly to food sites and once there do not locomote very much. Other birds forage on the ground habitually. The…

Fast, Cheap and Ooops. NASA's NanoSail may be dead, but it was not that big of a deal.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is part of my own personal enigma. I have shown it to people who don't know me, who don't know what I think about, who don't know much about what I study. Nineteen out of twenty such people react in this matter: A cold stare with underlying anger for wasting their precious time. I admit that most of this has happened to captive audiences in the classroom, but it has also happened with family members and colleagues. Then, time goes by. Lectures. Conversations. Blog posts. And suddenly one day, seven out of the nineteen say something like: Oh ... Aha…

It's snowing dogs and dogs outside

It is funny to see this headline on our local news (CBS) web site: "Some Prep for Snow, Other Think Flakes Won't Fly Yet" Then I look outside the window and see accumulations nearing a half foot of snow, then I look at the weather maps and realize that the local CBS affiliate is probably buried, so no one could update the story about how it might not snow and stuff. Speaking of WCCO, the local CBS affiliate, yesterday Tim Pawlenty, our lame Governor (insert the word "duck" in there if you want, though I'm not sure why you would), did his last weekly radio address. I never did listen to one…

The melting of the Arctic ice cap is a complex process

You've heard that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk, and that there are sea lanes open in the northern summer that had not been open previously, and on and so forth. Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older "multiyear" sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season. Some scientists suspected that this loss was due entirely to wind pushing the ice out of the Arctic Basin -- a process that scientists refer to as "export." In this study, Ron Kwok and Glenn Cunningham at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif…

Get meaner, angrier, louder, fiercer

The IDists love to quote me, because I am rather militant in my opposition to their lies. They are particularly fond of one particular quote* that they've even used in their fund-raising literature. They think it's damning; some of my fellow anti-creationists swoon and protest when they hear the words, but they tend to be faint-hearted anyway. But here's what's really amusing. I get fan mail from people all the time who are overjoyed that someone out there on the evolution side isn't an apologetic ditherer. Even better, one ID-friendly conservative tried to rouse his audience with the horror…

The Nature of the Racist Conversation

This is Melisa Riviere. White People sometimes do hip hop. I have a reading suggestion for you. First a little background. I've gotten into a few arguments on race and racism in my time, some on this blog. Racist thinking is all around us. Why just a few hours ago, a neighbor complained that his car had been robbed by the black kids that pass down our street now and then. How did he know it was the black kids? Because the people who robbed his car like hip-hop. How did he know that? Because they didn't take his rock cds. Oh, did they take his hip hop cd's? Well no, he doesn't…

The "Swine Flu" does not have a name?

Effect Measure has an interesting take-down of a post on The Global Language Monitor (GLM), which brings up an interesting point or two. The GLM is a very strange site which has, as Revere points out, declared itself to be an important go-to place to find out about language trends across the world. I have not decided what I think about this site except when I browse around it it I feel my guard going up, and up and up. In a recent post, the GLM lists cases of inappropriate political correctness. The GLM says "Once again, we are seeing that the attempt to remove all bias from language is…

The True Meaning of the Super Bowl (Bonus commentary by Adolf Hitler)

I did not appreciate the sentiment that the New York Yankees had to win the World Series because Osama Bin Laden blew up the World Trade Center. I do not appreciate the sentiment that the New Orleans Saints have to win the Super Bowl because George Bush let poor New Orleans residents die in the Super Dome. I do appreciate the equivalence ... between an uncaring homicidal mass murdering maniac and some guy from the Arabian Peninsula who seems to have been the mastermind of dozens of failed terrorist attacks and a couple of ugly ones. But that is another story. I do not appreciate the idea…

From Fit to Fat to Fit: Doing it

When it comes down to it, it is all a matter of just how hard you are willing to work. Then, you start with that and work harder. ... continued ... I got my six free sessions, and then I paid for a lot more. In the end, I've paid less for cars I've driven for years, but it was worth it. Having never been part of the "workout" culture, having never gone to a gym before, I found Lenora's training to be invaluable. We were efficient. I would arrive at the gym way before hand and do all my warm-ups. I'd do my post-workout stretches after the session, as well as selected exercises that…

McCain, Obama, and the odds of surviving two terms as President

After all the recent blogging about John McCain's health and whether his melanoma will recur or his left ptosis is anything other than from benign causes, probably relating to aging, you just know I couldn't pass this story up: WASHINGTON (AP) -- If John McCain is elected and goes on to win a second term, there's as much as a one-in-four chance America could see its first woman president -- Sarah Palin. It's actuarial math. The odds highly favor either McCain or Barack Obama completing a first term in good health. After that, McCain's odds still are still fairly solid, but his chances of…

Et tu, Lance?

Say it ain't so! Skeptics' Circle host from earlier this year Rod Clark informs me that another celebrity has been sucked into maw of antivaccine propagandizing disguised as an autism charity. The one luring these celebrities in, of course, is that tireless, ever-Indigo campaigner against vaccines and for quackery Jenny McCarthy, flexing her D-list celebrity luster and snookering celebrities into supporting her antivaccine cause (unless, of course, that celebrity is Charlie Sheen, who's already an antivaccine loon and thus requires no deception). First, it was Britney Spears, Hugh Hefner, and…

The SCIO, Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, and Bill Nelson: Better late than never--or maybe not

As my fellow Americans (ack! I'm sounding like a politician!) know, this happens to be a holiday weekend in the States, Monday being Labor Day. Given that, I'm taking it easy blogging until Tuesday, given that most people (in the U.S. at least) are probably out taking advantage of the opportunity that what is traditionally considered the last weekend of the summer vacation season affords. Me and my wife, we're taking advantage of this three day weekend to do somthing truly fun: To finally put our basement in order. (There's still a ton of stuff down there from when we moved in.) Woo-hoo! In…

Hovind's trial is all done but the sentencing

The description of the end of the Hovind trial from the Pensacola News Journal can be found below the fold. Foolish little man. Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind winked at his wife and gave her a reassuring smile as he was led away to jail. Jo Hovind clutched the necktie he had been wearing. She kept her eyes on her husband until he was out of sight. A 12-person jury deliberated for 2½ hours on Thursday before finding the couple guilty of all counts in their tax-fraud case. Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was…