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Christian Video Games Target Infidels

From the same loonies that brought us the Left Behind series comes the Left Behind video game. In this game, you roam the streets of New York with heavy weaponry and to score points you must either kill the infidels or make them convert. And no, I'm not making this up. The game is set in New York City, where the Tribulation Force clashes with the Antichrist's Global Community Peacekeepers in a tale that makes the United Nations a tool for Satan. Each side attempts to recruit lost souls in the battle for the city. "Eternal Forces" is a so-called real-time strategy game -- players act as…

CNN Story on "Ex-Gay" Therapy

AmericaBlog has a post about a CNN story on therapists trying to convert gays to being ex-gay. I can't get the video to work, but the description is hilarious: 1. Where the gay guy in "therapy" says that the reason he turned gay is that he had "emotional incest" with his mom. Uh huh. 2. The wacky "ex-gay 'therapist'" showing that one way to cure yourself is to take a tennis racket and beat the crap out of a pillow while screaming your mother's name (it's totally freaky). This will help you release "hidden memories in your muscles." Yes, your muscles store memories that make you gay. And don't…

Here's an Interesting Tidbit

My buddy Jeff just emailed me a link to a wikipedia article about the REM song "It's the end of the world as we know it". It says: The lyrics chronicle a scenario for the end of the world as well as listing various pop icons and politicians at a rapid pace. The chorus ends with the famous reassuring statement, "and I feel fine." While there are many plausible explanations for what the combination of lyrics mean, it is widely believed that the inspiration for this song came after Michael Stipe attended a Policy Debate competition at a high school in north Texas or from watching a college…

More Caricature Cowardice

Yet another example of caving in to threats of violence from Islamic radicals: Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries. I'm beginning to think that many Americans don't really believe in free speech, and we know that the rest of the world doesn't care much about it. They believe in free speech as long as it's convenient or as long as it doesn't offend a protected group. There are people who want to destroy our right to speak…

Audiobooks of the Times

Not a lot in the Times this week (other than, you know, depressing news about the Middle East), but I did find their piece on couples arguing over audiobooks amusing: [L]ately an unwitting group has been parachuting into the matrimonial crossfire: authors. As more couples discover how an audio book breaks the monotony of a road trip, writers who once enjoyed sovereignty on respective night tables are now fighting for air time in the family car. "While I like business books, or nonfiction, or maybe science fiction," said Mr. Wollborg, who rents from Simply Audiobooks, which is set up like…

Extremely Dorky Poll

Rob Knop offers a nice discussion of the speed of light, in response to last night's question. This post is not about that, though you should go read it. This post is about my odd reaction to Rob's title: "'Speed of Light' : a bad name for a great fundamental constant?" The notion of a "great fundamental constant" sort of suggests the possiblity of a not-great fundamental constant. Which leads to the extremely dorky poll questions: What is your favorite fundamental constant? What is your least favorite fundamental constant? Post your answers in the comments (I'm too lazy to set up clicky-…

On the utility of mice

I'm soon to run off to a class in which we're going to discuss 16th-17th century science (Vesalius, Bacon, Harvey, Hooke, etc.), and there's an amusing passage in J.A. Moore's book that I have to share. It's a description of a bestiary by Edward Topsell that explains the importance and usefulness of various animals, including mice. Mice seemed to do everything. A mouse can be skinned, cut in two, and placed over an arrow wound to help the healing process; if a mouse is beaten into pieces and mixed with old wine, the concoction will cause hair to grow on the eyelids; if skinned, steeped in oil…

Songs to Run Errands To

I'm going to be busy nearly all day today with our annual undergraduate research symposium on campus. I'm bribing some of my intro students to attend (five points on next week's exam), and chairing a session, and judging the annual student research award, so it's a full day. As a distraction (the best way to avoid dread, as any fule kno, though some fules with brain scanners have now conclusively shown it), here's a set of ten songs that my iPod threw out yesterday while I was running errands. With one exception, they were all pretty good songs for driving around on a gorgeous spring day: "…

Uncertain Pop Quiz

Imagine that you are doing a physics lab to measure the velocity of a small projectile. After making a bunch of measurements to four significant figures, and doing a bunch of arithmetic, you get a value of 4.371928645 m/s. After yet more gruelling math, you find the uncertainty associated with this number to be 0.0316479825 m/s. How do you report your answer in a lab report? (There was talk a while back about getting ScienceBlogs some fancy poll software that would allow me to do this with radio buttons and automatic counting, but I don't know how to do that yet, and I'm curious about the…

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

The Kuiper Belt Controversy continues, with the lastest round showing up in the Times today: Planet Discovered Last Year, Thought to Be Larger Than Pluto, Proves Roughly the Same Size: The object -- still unnamed more than a year after its discovery but tagged with the temporary designation 2003 UB313 and nicknamed Xena by the discoverer -- covered an area only 1.5 pixels wide in the digital image, taken by the space telescope in December. But that was enough to extract the diameter: 1,490 miles, give or take 60 miles. A previous estimate by a team of German researchers, based on measurements…

Better Jobs Than Science

Via Matt McIrvin (whose earlier entry on "Nerd Bravado" is also a must-read), the best explanation I've heard so far of the whole "Why are there so few women in scinece?" debate: they got better jobs: One of my students, we'll call him Bill, in an introductory computer science class said that he wanted to be a biologist when he grew up. What biologists had Bill met? They were all professors at MIT and about half of them had won the Nobel Prize. This is hardly an average sample of people who went to Biology graduate school! Fortunately, Bill was a tall good-looking fellow. He managed to score…

Bad beekeepin', good houseleekin', loadsasnowin'

I go away for a week and the bees go mad. I don't mean so mad that they put their honey in a pot for me - only that they seem to have filled up the hive to the top, probably with rape. And this despite them being a new swarm, in place only since late May. That's 13 kg of honey (err, with wax mixed in of course, since the frames in the top super were foundationless, because I was in a hurry. They did not put their own comb neatly in rows). Also while we were away the houseleeks have come out into full flower, even better than last year. That one is unadjusted, but not really true colour.…

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Climate Science Coalition

Are the [[International Climate Science Coalition]] notable? (webcite in case they aren't and you care 7 days from now). By which I mean, in the sense of Wikipedia:Notability. Sources about them are thin on the ground, and those so far proposed only mention them in passing. Blogs don't count, of course, and nor does their own PR. We'll find out in a bit, because its up for deletion (note: I didn't propose it, though I did PROD it). I put this up just for fun. I don't encourage you to go there and "vote" (either keep or delete). You can if you like, but you'd have to have something to say -…

Book of the New Sun

Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun: The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure's helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more. (I remembered this roughly, but the exact text is from here. The picture I nicked and cropped doesn't match this description; I don't know if there is one that does). Ultimately, the Apollo programme was rather pointless, a dead…

Amerika headed for theocracy?

This is something I wonder about off-an-on; with Happy Birthday, Charles! The Phytophactor has now put clearly the "doom" version: There was a time in this country when policy was debated, but then politicians found out it was easier to deny the science rather than debate policy, and now the people who do the science are being demonized. If these ideologues have their way the USA will fall even further under the sway of fundamentalist theocrats, and thus our society will begin to converge on that of Islamic countries charging forward into the past, the distant past, the Dark Ages, at a time…

Just a teensy tiny bit more Curry. But not much.

Via Baron von Monckhofen an interesting video, though I think it has been doing the rounds for a while now. [Update: While I'm on the silly people, there is a nice takedown of the Jonny Ball nonsense by Deltoid. Which features the familiar elements: ridiculous claims which fall apart under the flimsiest examination, but which are nonetheless repeated by the std.septics. And for something more sensible: Bart goes where I tend not to and discusses biodiversity. Oh dear. But my blog-reading has now got as far as Tamino, who provides a wonderful example of US political stupidity (see-also the…

Focus lies are selling poorly

Or so says KLIMARETTER.INFO. Here is the google auto-trans from the German: Provocative it is, but apparently it is not enough: the issue of the conservative magazine, Focus on the benefits of global warming is only a little German kiosks have been sold to the. The booklet, entitled "Great atmosphere!" is , according to the Hamburger Abendblatt 84 000 times over the counter moved only - that is the worst result in the entire year 2010. Just in time for the world climate summit in Cancun, Mexico made the Focus a frontispiece with, the polar bear with sunglasses showing a. For this, the…

More details on the Thursday debate

As promised, here are the details on my debate this week. Debate: Are Science and Religion Compatible? An Evening of Stimulating Intellectual Discourse with Loyal Rue and PZ Myers Sponsored by Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists Thursday, February 7, 2008 7:00pm - 10:00pm West Bank Auditorium- Willey Hall 225 19th Avenue S Minneapolis, MN 55455 I must say I like the tagline — "An Evening of Stimulating Intellectual Discourse" — since I don't think this will be the kind of ferocious bloody battle some of you might be hoping for. Rue is a religious moderate, so I don't anticipate any…

Bee blogging

(for Maz). Perceptive readers will notice that this is a bumblebee, and on a hollyhock, so is anachronistic. Sunday afternoon, and I finally had time to see to the girls. This was my first visit of the year (oh, the shame) and so finding the beesuit and trousers and gloves was step one. Step two was the smoker, cardboard and matches. Step 3 took rather longer, and was to clear the nettles and general vegetation away from the hive. After that, it was time to open up, and I was pleased to find a happy hive full of bees with the two supers nearly full, but not capped. The Rape is around this…

Standard creationist tactics, as expected

Two days ago I was asked to participate in a radio debate with a Discovery Institute fellow. I asked about the topic and the format, and they said, "the evidence of Evolution vs. evidence of Intelligent Design" and "each would get a 5 minute opening statement and then we would debate the issues brought out in the opening statements." OK, sure, I said, while rolling my eyes at the ridiculous expectations. I'm supposed to call in in an hour and a half. I just got this email. I just received an e-mail from Dr. Simmons requesting the title of the debate to change to "Are Darwin's Theories Fact or…

Mirror, mirror...

So this is an idea shamelessly stolen from Noah Smith, a blogger who writes about economics.  He has created an "illustrated bestiary", introduced thusly: In your journey through the Econ Blogosphere, you will be beset by a great many curious and interesting species of EconoTroll. At first you may be intimidated by their voluminous use of insider jargon, their rough-and-tumble personal attacks, their strenuous insistence that you read the complete works of their movements' founders before participating in any discussion, and above all their sheer persistence and apparent surplus of spare time…

DId you all catch Comer on Science Friday?

It was short, mainly taken up with Chris Comers trying to tell her side of the story, and not getting it all in within the time allotted. The main points I got out of it were: It sure sounds like this was a planned expulsion, with pressure being applied for weeks ahead of the incident that prompted it. It's not entirely clear, but this does not sound like a voluntary resignation. She was sandbagged with a letter from the Bush appointee, Lizzette Reynolds, that opened with a statement that she had committed a firing offense; she was later summoned without warning to a long meeting that…

O'Reilly on Webb

Here's Bill O'Reilly pretending to be outraged by Jim Webb's lack of respect for the presidency (see yesterday's post for the details): Now that was rude on Webb's part. The president, knowing Webb's anti-war sentiments, went out of his way to engage the senator-elect about his son. That was a nice gesture, was it not? Webb took the occasion to politic. That was inappropriate, especially at the White House. And then he turned disrespectful. Now, we've invited Senator-elect Webb on “The Factor” to talk it over, but so far, he has not accepted. But I will say this directly to him: It's fine to…

Quantum Physics for Dogs at Jefferson Lab: TOMORROW

I've been remiss in my self-promotional duties, but I'm giving a public lecture tomorrow night in Newport News, VA, as part of the Jefferson Lab Science Series. This will be my traditional "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk, with the sad addition of a slide honoring the late, great Queen of Niskayuna (visible as the "featured image" with this post). This isn't the first dog-physics talk I've given since her death in December, but the previous one was the relativity talk, which has less Emmy-specific content. This one includes one of the video clips I made around a dog…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Bounces, Literacy, Rule Changes, Lone Geniuses, and Rugby

A longer-than-usual gap between recap posts, but thanks to some kid illnesses and the Thanksgiving holiday, not all that many new physics posts over at Forbes: -- Football Physics: Checking The Odds On Wild Bounces: A backyard experiment to see how often a bouncing football takes a big hop. Follows from this rant and prompted this post on rotation. -- Physics Demands Many Kinds Of Literacy: Some musings about the many different ways physicists process information, prompted by graphs generated for the previous item. -- Football Physics: How Would Changing The Laws Of Physics Change Football?:…

033/366: Ommmm.....

Saturdays are the busiest days around Chateau Steelypips, with both SteelyKid and The Pip having soccer in the morning (in two different places), then lunch, then some sort of activity for the afternoon. Yesterday, this was a party for one of SteelyKid's friends. And last night, there was a Movie Night at SteelyKid's BFF's house, where the kids all watched a cartoon and the adults hung around reveling in adult conversation. All of which means that I managed to go the entire day without taking any photos. Not even a cell-phone snapshot (I'm assistant coaching SteelyKid's soccer team, but the…

Cute Kids: Your Hugo Discussion Alternative

I was thinking about writing something about the 2015 Hugo Award nominations train wreck, but you know what? Life's too short. So here's a couple of cute-kid photos from this morning's trip to the Children's Museum of Science and Technology over in Troy. They have these awesome construction toys, consisting of wooden rods with holes through them, and long bolts, washers, and wing nuts to connect them, and we spent most of our time in the building room. On the left, you see The Pip, having picked up one of the screwdrivers that go with the set, and wearing his "fixing goggles." Because eye…

Heed the word of God

George W. Bush is having private conversations with an invisible friend. Back in 2003 he met with the Palestinians and told them all about it. Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'" Let's…

Shawn Otto Sunday Morning Interview: You are invited!

Shawn otto Shawn is the screenwriter and coproducer of the Oscar-nominated film House of Sand and Fog starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. He has also written for several of film and TV's top studios. A few years back he started Science Debate 08, an effort to get a real debate over science policy issues as part of the presidential debate process. I promise you that all of the presidential campaigns have been aware of this effort, and many have agreed, but never all the candidates in one election. So that's politicians running away from science. (We'll see about 2016.) Anyway,…

Odile, Polo, and the Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season 2014

Odile was the strongest hurricane to strike the Baja Peninsula during the period of available data, roughly similar to Hurrican Olivia (1967). The storm reached Category 4 strength but was then weakened because of interaction with the effects of a prior hurricane in the area (Norbert). At the moment, Odile is a tropical storm and still in the Baja. There was flooding, and two fatalities, including a lightning strike and a nine year old boy taken by floodwaters. Several building in Acapulco were damaged. There has been a lot of damage and disruption in the Baja region. Tropical Storm Polo…

Space Robots On The Angry Red Planet

There is little that is cooler than robots on mars doing science. Human space agencies have been sending probes to the surface of various planets (and the Moon) for years now, with the full range of failure and success. But the last decade or so has seen space robots such as Mars Curiosity Rover sciencing the shit, as they say, out of the planet Mars. Emily Lakdawala, of the Planetary Society, is a planetary geologist and science communicator who knows a lot about driving rovers. It turns out that this is all very complicated, and when science gets big, expensive, high stakes, and…

News Flash: James Webb Space Telescope SAVED!

[caption id="attachment_19545" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Image credit: NASA and the James Webb Space Telescope Team."] [/caption] The news has just come in: the United States Senate has decided to fully fund the James Webb Space Telescope, and it should be set to launch in 2018, which is the earliest it can possibly go ahead at this point. Universe Today has the full story, and reports: The 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope and support up to a launch in 2018! ... In addition to…

The Birds Of India: New Guide

A Photographic Field Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh is one of those next gen guides that uses photos but photos that are either enhanced or contextualized to serve the same role as drawings served in the old days, when drawings were better and photos were merely fun. From the editors: This is the only comprehensive photographic field guide to the birds of the entire Indian subcontinent. Every distinct species and subspecies--some 1,375 in all- -is covered with photographs, text, and maps. The guide features more than 4,000 stunning photographs…

Hey, I'm not European!

I have just been informed that those sneaky Europeans at AFOE are having a poll, and I'm on it in the category of "Best Non-European Weblog", and I'm losing badly. This wouldn't be so bad if losing meant I got the title of "Best European Weblog", but apparently trivial geographic and cultural differences will be used as an excuse to disqualify me there. Somehow, though, Sadly, No is winning in a landslide. I don't understand how that can happen, and can only attribute it to the fact that a bunch of foreigners are voting, and they can't read the title as an injunction to not vote for them.…

Under President Trump, US No Longer Primary World Power

It appears that if Donald Trump is elected president, many world leaders, including the leaders of the Western European countries, will freeze out the US from intelligence and security decisions, because they have learned that they can't trust Trump's ability to manage or handle intelligence, and recognize that he will be Putin's puppet. In phone calls, meetings and cables, America’s European allies have expressed alarm to one another about Donald Trump’s public statements denying Moscow’s role in cyberattacks designed to interfere with the U.S. election. They fear the Republican nominee for…

A suggestion for some diligent reporter out there

We're seeing a lot of news about Ken Ham's creationist lie, this so-called "museum" he has built out in Kentucky. What we're not seeing from our media is any scrutiny of the finances behind the construction, or behind the evangelical boiler room called "Answers in Genesis". Has any editor or reporter considered the possibility that there might be something juicier behind the story than "Preacher pretends church is a museum"? Is anyone—dare I say it—investigating this organization? Their finances are a matter of public record. Everyone talks about how the museum cost $27 million to build, but…

Rah, rah, RASC

Let's encourage this trend of scientific societies coming out with unambiguous statements of support for good science. The latest addition is the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada-Ottawa Centre statement on evolution: it's short and to the point. The RASC Ottawa Centre supports high standards of scientific integrity, academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also respects the scientific method and recognizes that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypotheses, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others. The RASC…

The Animal Connection

You know of Pat Shipman at the very least because of her recent and, dare I say, highly controversial and excellent book The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction. If you've not read it, do so. But, in the mean time, another book she wrote in the same area, The Animal Connection: A New Perspective on What Makes Us Human, is now available on Kindle for two bucks. Why do humans all over the world take in and nurture other animals? This behavior might seem maladaptive—after all, every mouthful given to another species is one that you cannot eat—but in this…

Faking explosive evidence to discredit the legit press to protect Trump

Part of the active effort to defend Trump and his administration and campaign against accusations that they directly engaged with the Russians to alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election appears to be the faking of explosive documents, sent to news agencies. When these fake documents are then used, and subsequently discredited, the news agency, the reporters, the specific story at hand, and the entire investigation against Trump and his people all lose credibility. Here, Rachel Maddow reports on a document sent to "Send it to Rachel." Who is behind this attack? I assume someone…

Weekend Diversion: Fair and Balanced and Aliens

Looking back on this week, I had a post about astronomy with a wide-angle lens and about the Tunguska blast. For this weekend's music, I'm going to rob South Park and show you South Park Elementary's #1 TV show of all time: And for your weekend amusement, I'll refer you back to my story on Tunguska, which is about one crazy Russian and his insistence that an alien spaceship saved the Earth from an asteroid. Since then -- on this site and in person -- the following theories have been advanced to me: Nikola Tesla caused Tunguska with a secret, never-been-reproduced energy weapon, The…

Chiming in on the Swine Flu

There are plenty of great sites here on Scienceblogs that have talked about the swine flu, including Aetiology, the Scientific Activist, Greg Laden, Ethics and Science, and Effect Measure, among others. But I've noticed, reading comments here and elsewhere, that people are really, seriously terrified of this. And yes, it can kill you if you don't take care of it. But what does the swine flu mean for you? Here's my rundown on it: Swine flu will not kill you if you treat it in time. You will not be asymptomatic. If you have swine flu, you will have (surprise) flu-like symptoms. It is about as…

Scientific Arguments

Sometimes, I publish things on this website that are not entirely correct (and when I do, I'll own up to it). Sometimes other people do on theirs. There are bad ways and good ways to argue these points, ranging from name-calling to explicitly explaining where the flaws are in one's arguments, and what the corrections are. And I had no idea how I was going to articulate this. But then Lucas pointed this chart out to me, and it does a better job of explaining it than I ever could. You know who could explain this? Captain Picard. Imagine you got to be a Starfleet officer. Here's what he has to…

How do we get HPV infections, anyway?

One of the weirdest issues to drive the religious right into frothing madness was the discovery of a vaccine against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which would effectively reduce rates of cervical cancer … and it was opposed because it blocked infection with a sexually transmitted disease, and thus would encourage licentiousness. Weird, I know. Their brains don't work right. Anyway, here's a new twist: investigators have found other non-genital reservoirs of the virus: HPV strains that could cause severe forms of cancer have been found under people's fingernails. Ooooh, yuck, you filthy…

Books, Wonderful Books

I plan to spend a good chunk of my weekend reading two new books that have recently come into my possession. And the best part is that I didn't have to pay for either of them - the only thing cooler than books are free books. The first is Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, by Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll is a geneticist from the University of Wisconsin and one of the most influential evolutionary biologists alive (not to be confused with Sean Carroll, the University of Chicago cosmologist). My dad just finished reading this book and dropped it off to me figuring I'd want…

Elsberry on Dover Ruling

Friend and fellow Panda lover Wes Elsberry has an interesting post on the Dover ruling on his personal blog where he points out two fascinating items. First, that Dembski may owe someone a bottle of good scotch: I'll wager a bottle of single-malt scotch, should it ever go to trial whether ID may legitimately be taught in public school science curricula, that ID will pass all constitutional hurdles. To see why, check out the fine Utah Law Review article by David DeWolf et al. at http://www.arn.org/docs/dewolf/utah.pdf. In case you were wondering, Bill, I prefer Lagavulin (21 year old) or…

Potential O'Brien Trophy Nominee

A reader sent me a link to this post by Steve Benen about an Eagle Forum article on evolution and creationism. No, Steve is not the potential O'Brien Tropy nominee, the author of the document he cites is. That author appears to be "Virginia Armstrong, PhD", the national chairman of the Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlaffly's group). I don't know what her PhD is in or where it's from, but it sure isn't in critical thinking. Wait until you see this positively breathtaking nugget of stupidity that she drops concerning evolution: Fact v. Fiction #2: Evolutionists claim that their battle against creation…

Jackie Mason Gets a Gig

This kills me. Reported, naturally, in the Worldnutdaily, the incredibly annoying and painfully unfunny Jackie Mason is joining up with a group called "Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation" and will be riding down 5th Avenue in New York to protest the entirely mythical "War on Christmas". And he'll be surrounded by a delightful cast of wingnuts as well: Mason is a founding member of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, or JAACD, the organization sponsoring the event. According to a statement from the group, the entertainer will ride in a 15-foot Ford Excursion with banners proclaiming, "…

Radley Balko Gets Gifts

Turns out I'm not the only blogger to get cool gifts from readers. Radley Balko (who works at the Cato Institute, coincidentally in line with the last post) is thanking some of his readers for sending him a couple of cool CDs and it includes one of my favorite groups, the Freddy Jones Band. They're not terribly well known, but they should be. He writes: I've owned the Freddy Jones Band CD a couple of times, and continually seem to displace it. It's good stuff. Chill, 90's rock. Little bit jam band, little bit Americana. Pretty good description. I first saw them, if memory serves me well, on…

Raich Goes On

And here is why, despite Prof. Zywicki's behavior, I continue to read Volokh every day. For legal scholars like Randy Barnett and the kind of information that can be gotten only from blogs like that. Barnett writes that the case of Gonzales v Raich, last year's infamous medical marijuana ruling, is still alive in the courts. I had no idea. Barnett explains why: Yes, the case goes on. The Supreme Court only ruled on the Commerce Clause theory we won on below. This left us on remand to the Ninth Circuit to reassert our claim that the application of the Controlled Substances Act to Angel Raich (…

Spectacular New Crab Nebula Images Close In On Its Final Secrets (Synopsis)

"The origin and evolution of life are connected in the most intimate way with the origin and evolution of the stars." -Carl Sagan The Crab Nebula is one of the most interesting and compelling objects in the entire night sky. In the year 1054, a supernova went off in the constellation of Taurus, where it became brighter than anything other than the Sun and Moon in the sky. Some 700 years later, astronomers discovered the remnant of that supernova: the Crab Nebula. An optical composite/mosaic of the Crab Nebula as taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The different colors correspond to…