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Happy HalloMeme!

Oh-oh! I got tagged by another meme - the Happy HalloMeme! - by Rick. The idea is to highlight a scary marine or SF film! I was very young, probably around 7 or 8, when TV Belgrade decided to air a weekly series of old Jack Arnold movies, including It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. But the one that really scared me (I could not sleep that night and had scary moments for quite a while afterwards) was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Some decades later it may look silly and naive, but for a little boy at the time, it was horrifying! See for yourself…

teh hawt bloggin'

Isis, our very own laboratory goddess, apparently knows the secret to hot and sexy science blogging. We investigate. Apparently it is all about leather, a shapely calf, and hot shoes - this will drive traffic up on the most boring sites D00d! I can totally do that. Has it all. Leather, shoe fetish, the pose. If I don't at the very least out traffic PZ hisself this weekend, I will be very disappointed. If that wasn't scary enough for you, I can always try the ScienceBlogs calendar for next year! (see Isis, above). But I now know what we can challenge Chad to do for the next DonorChoose…

they cut the tallest blooms

Chad, rightly, considers "Fairytale of New York" to be one of the greatest holiday anthems of all time. News have now arrived, via Iceland of course, that the BBC is censoring the song during play. The problem is Kirsty McCall's "You scumbag, you maggot/You cheap lousy faggot" line. The Beeb now fades Kirsty's voice on that last word. Offensensitivity folks. The locals respond Personally I rather like faggots, especially with lots of onion and gravy chased down with a nice beer. Don't understand what the fuzz is about. Maybe it is some public school thing. And mushy peas! Lots of mushy…

Officially Official

In my campus mailbox this morning: Dear Chad: I am pleased to report that on Februrary 10, 2007 the Board of Trustees approved our recommendation that you be tenured effective September 1, 2007 at the rank of Associate Professor. Woo-hoo! It took about half a second to decide to sign the copy indicating my acceptance, and send it back. That brightens an otherwise groggy and out-of-sorts morning... (Amusingly, the other thing in the letter describes an offer to pay half the cost of a set of academic robes for those occasions when I want to look like a medieval scholar. It's actually a pretty…

Why Lynch doesn't watch basketball any more ...

I don’t watch NBA basketball. I don’t watch NCAA basketball. I used to play basketball in high school and played club basketball in college (Ireland doesn’t have the same college scene as here). The reason why I don’t watch is something Chad has hit upon when talking about Davidson’s run for the "final four": Basketball isn’t just about amazing physical feats-- it’s about knowledge and planning and execution, and a team that plays the game well can hang with (and sometimes beat) vastly superior individual athletes. That’s more impressive to me than any acrobatic highlight-reel dunk.…

Security theater

Chad points out how the war on water has led airport security astray: In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints. The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. Of course, the screeners missed weapons that weren't accompanied by deadly, deadly water, so maybe it wouldn't matter. On the other hand, the imminent paper jihad is sure to keep…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

A couple of reviews, an offer, and a mystery regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: The reviews: A review at suite101 that went up a while ago, but I somehow missed in the vanity search. It's a nice, detailed review, and if I had to pick a pull quote it would probably be: "You can be prepared for a good scientific romp throughout Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Thinking like a dog is a big help." Scott at a physics teaching blog has a more recent review: "I often pick up books and don't bother finishing them. This book kept pulling me back to discover what oddity was next. I…

the million dollar question

Rob at Galactic Interactions has existential issues Sean has some thoughts on the issue It is an interesting topic, but one that is very hard to comment on. The criteria for tenure vary somewhat between different universities, but at the "R1" level (annoying but useful bio concept that) the broad guideline, in my humble opinion as a tenured faculty member who is not on the promotion and tenure committee(!) is "million dollars, fifty papers and don't screw up on the teaching". The actual number depend on details, some fields just don't have that sort of money, or the number of papers expected…

Lazy Blogging Saturday

It's been a while since I looked at the search engine keywords on Goggle Analytics for this site. It's a little depressing to find that PZ Myers turns up three times ("pharyngula," "Pharyngula," and "PZ Myers") before my own name. Worse yet, Aaron Bergman, who doesn't even have a blog any more, also shows up three times before I do. Aaron, start blogging again. Or get a LiveJournal account, given that "aaron bergman livejournal" is the fifth most popular search term on this site. Give the people what they want, already. There are also lots of people wanting to know how many substitutions you…

The story of symbolic algebra

Chad is not happy with my previous post where I consider that we shouldn't expect that everyone should be able to pass algebra conditional upon a deep understanding of the subject. First, let me state that my post was in part operating outside what I will call the "Cohen narrative." Rather, I wanted to interject the opinion that variation is a contingent fact of human history (otherwise, we wouldn't have been shaped by natural selection). I was attempting to offer that the alternatives are not black and white in that everyone should learn algebra or that everyone need not learn algebra.…

random interesting snippets

Linking is a public good y'know hos has a cathartic rant about the bailout The TED spread is 3.86 this afternoon - that is after the bailout passed. If you know what the TED spread is you should now be tasting vomit in your throat. LIBOR is also spiking, natch. The US usually quotes the "U3" index for the unemployment rate. The U6 rate is in many ways a more robust measure, but a lot scarier. It is also more like what some European governments report when they state "the unemployment rate", or so I am told. PhysioProf explains about applying for faculty positions - you listen! Chad worries…

Podcasts I Pay For

Part of my subscriptions list in Podkicker I give these podcasts $5-8 monthly. Only the HPLLP has a pay wall. The Drabblecast -- Norm Sherman produces strange stories by strange authors for strange listeners. The Geologic Podcast -- George Hrab on skepticism, music and more. The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast -- Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey on pre-WW2 horror fiction. Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff -- Kenneth Hite and Robin Laws wax eloquent and eclectic on gaming, fiction, history, occultism, books, movies, and the list just goes on. I've also been a paying member of the Planetary…

Basic Concepts Query

We've been chatting in the ScienceBlogs forum about doing some posts about basic concepts in science -- short articles for people who don't necessarily have lots of background but would like to get some. Anyway, Chad is inquiring from his readers what kind of posts they would like to see. Suggestions for him are ideas like energy and force. I think that idea is a good one, and I am happy to participate. So here's the question: If I were to post some basic concepts articles, what would you like to know about? If it were something related to neuroscience, that would probably be good. At…

ScienceBlogs: What if...

In regards to the recent PepsiCo blog situation (you know the one I mean), I wasn't going to say much. First, because Chad did a good job at expressing my views (without me even telling him ). Second, I am just happy to be at ScienceBlogs - I had been kicked off two servers and had to hitch a ride on a friend's server (thanks Bill) before arriving here. Some other bloggers, were a little more put out. Now I understand why. I came to this understanding by doing a thought experiment. What if it wasn't PepsiCo that paid for a sponsored blog? What if instead it was ESPN's Sport Science? I…

Cosmic Variance "sells out"

Chad has a post up about Cosmic Variance's move to Discover Blogs. He notes that some people lamenting the decline of the "old blogosphere" haven't been around blogs that long. He doesn't mention that he's been blogging since 2002. So have I. Most blogs have always sucked, that's a constant. Some of the less-sucky ones now have the option of remuneration. With four major competing scienceblog networks I think you'll get some competition driving quality. Granted, a great deal of blog writing will remain crap; just like a great deal of the media. The laws of the universe have not changed…

Appropriate use of sources.

The other day, Chad asked about the appropriate use of someone else's published data: There's a classic paper on the Quantum Zeno Effect that I discuss in Chapter 5 of the book. The paper does two tests of the effect, and presents the results in two bar graphs. They also provide the data in tabular form. ... If I copy the data from the table, and make my own version of the graph, am I obliged to contact them and ask permission to duplicate their results in my book? Chad's commenters were of the view (substantiated with credible linked sources) that data itself cannot be copyrighted under U.…

Meet the Pip

As of 4:35 this morning, Chateau Steelypips has a new member (though not yet resident, for a couple more days): This photo, with the traditional sky-bison for scale is our new baby boy, David Nepveu Orzel, henceforth to be referred to on the blog as "The Pip." Because "SteelyKid and The Pip" sounds like a crime-fighting duo to be reckoned with, it fits with the old domain-name scheme, and it's obviously a nickname, unlike the two other contenders, both of which were based on real-ish names suggested by SteelyKid ("Porter," short for "Transporter," which was SteelyKid's first suggestion of a…

Even the Queen

"So what do I need to do, again?" "First, you have to pick a username. So people know who you are." "OK. How about 'Emmy the Magnificent, Queen of Niskayuna and Surrounding Regions.' That should do the job." "Ah, no. That's 64 characters. Nobody would ever reply to you with a username that long. How about 'emmy_orzel'?" "You just want to get your name in there, and hog all the credit. How about 'Queen Emmy'?" "Fine, queen_emmy it is." "OK, so now what? When do I get bunnies?" "What bunnies? It's a Twitter account. There are no bunnies on Twitter." "Birds, then. This will help me catch…

Linkedy Links XIII

Playing catch-up here: Science is Hard - Chad's take Waiting for the Revolution - David Gross's take Why Open Access Makes No Sense - I think Robin Osborne is actually saying something other than social network reactions thought he was saying, but I am not saying he is right. The End of Kepler - Chris Tinney's take. This is the week they try to jostle the Kepler reaction wheels back to life. Long shot. Worth trying. Build a Better Solar System Something Seems Wrong With This Tenure Math MOOA! Ahahahahahahaha. No. Seriously. Why not? Why pre-School Shouldn't Be Like School Better Conference…

Getting down to basics.

Chad and Tara have spilled the beans on a highly classified backchannel discussion we ScienceBloggers have been having. Since the cat is already out of the bag (presumably a bag of beans), I suppose I'll chime in. What basic concepts would you like me to explain here? The idea, of course, would be for me to take a basic concept from my area of expertise and explain it in such a way that an intelligent non-expert would be able to grasp the important bits. As well, I'd want to explain why it matters to get clear on the concept, what it's good for, etc. I'd be happy to entertain requests…

Crap or Misunderstood?

What is the 'string theory' of your field? Following the success of Chad's last two memes I've decided to pose my own question. From the outside, it looks like string theory is a legitimate research area that is controversial amongst non-string-theorists. It appears to be misunderstood or unappreciated. Some physicists (yeah, I hate the way I phrased that . . . I'm sorry) do not think there is anything worth learning from string theory. Just to clarify, intelligent design is not the string theory of evolutionary biology -- no one takes it seriously. Maybe something like evolutionary…

Chad Speaks on $. You listen.

Chad speaks out on the upcoming, devastating, cuts in science and takes on Gordon over where the blame lies. You may be surprised. Either way you ought to read it. Here is my take on the issue, when the news came out last month... The root cause of these cuts is with the White House - the budget process was stymied by their veto threats and by the "silent filibustering" of the individual budget bills in the Senate (where the Republicans threaten to withold "unanimous consent" for bringing the bill to a vote if they don't like it - which is a bluff to filibuster - and for some reason the…

Gay Actors Playing Christians!

One of the great delights in reading the WorldNutDaily is watching them try to hype up completely pointless little teapot tempests into major controversies. Here's a perfect example from this morning's edition, complete with flashing graphic saying "Breaking News" and declaring it a "WND Exclusive" (which, as usual, means the article is so stupid that they're the only ones who would carry it, hence the exclusivity): Furor erupts as 'gay' plays Christian missionary in film (personally, I would have said "Fuhrer erupts", but that's just my twisted sense of humor). It seems that Chad Allen, an…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Contest Winners

After a long baby-induced delay, we are finally ready to announce the winners of the How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Caption Contest and Poetry Contest. I've obtained a few more copies of the bound galleys from the publisher, so we'll be giving two awards in each contest category: one for each photo, one for Cuttlefish poetry, and one for non-Cuttlefish poetry. And the winners are: Photo 1: The award goes to Nick at #25: Photo 2: The award goes to Eric Goebelbecer at #8: Honorable Mention: Dave W. at #11 and Konrad at #30. Let's ask the judges what they thought: Chad: All three of the…

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist: 10/3/2006

Buying an Allerca Kitten For a mere four grand (plus one extra for shipping and handling), a beautiful hypoallergenic kitten can be yours! Stop looking at the price tag ,and start looking at those adorable selectively-bred faces below the bullet points. Welcome to the Blogger SAT Challenge Chad and Dave are pleased to announce the conclusion of official judging. Read all about it, and see how the bloggers did. to infinity and beyond Get your history of the awesomeness of calculus (and a cute number trick) from the cocktail party. How To: Dismantleâan AtomicâBomb We got your worst case…

Amazing Jellies

tags: Amazing Jellies, jellyfish, siphonophores, gelata, gelatinous zooplankton, gelatinous marine animals, fluorescence, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Chad Widmer, Steve Haddock, QUEST, KQED, television, documentary, streaming video Perhaps you'd like to see what some of those creatures are that are being endangered by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? This lovely video provides a glimpse of the "gelata": siphonophores, jellies and other soft, gelatinous marine animals that lack bones and brains, but nonetheless, comprise much of marine life. They are otherworldly creatures that glow in the dark…

Scientists, neuter yourselves!

Chad reports a not-so-subtle message from a science conference: The annoying thing was the peripheral message-- she took pains to state several times that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress support science, in a tone that basically came across as chiding us for thinking otherwise. That was annoying by itself, but at the very end of the talk, she specifically warned against taking partisan positions, citing the letter supporting John Kerry that was signed by a couple dozen Nobel laureates as something that made it harder to keep science funding. She said that after that, when she met…

logic, religion and tenure

Fascinating post on Scott's shtetl-optimized on logical inference, religion and the parsimony of evolutionary optimised reasoning Read the whole thing. There is always a worry that scientific rationalism is a darwinian dead-end, in that it is suboptimal for reproductive fitness, and Scott touches on that. Mathematics, beyond basic arithmetic, may be a peacock feather in the long run. Or not, the fitness landscape changes and memes, not just genes, compete. We don't just reproduce, we convert... More important is the cognitive dissonance: Scott thinks prevention of suffering is a good basis…

Song of the Day

As of today, I can officially no longer claim to be in my "early 40's," so here's a great song with a thematically appropriate title: (The lyrical content has no particular relevance to my life, I hasten to add...) I'm taking a bit of a social-media hiatus at the moment, but it is very nice to see all the well-wishes from Facebook friends and acquaintances. Though I found it a little creepy to go to Google and see a special birthday-cake doodle with "Happy birthday, Chad!" as the mouseover text... Kate and I are leaving tonight for Rome, to go to a friend's wedding there. So you can expect…

This year's DonorsChoose Challenge

As you'll have noticed by now, I'm not doing a BioE DonorsChoose challenge this year. It was a really tough decision, but I currently have neither the time nor the spare cash to do a DonorsChoose promotion proper justice. Fortunately, I have a baker's dozen Sciblings who are going all out this year to beat the crews at Discover and Nature! Currently, PalMD is somehow ahead of Chad, but I'm sure that's only because there hasn't been any monkey-dancing yet. Plus, I hear Isis is threatening to deploy a secret weapon, so stay tuned. There's fun, schwag, and warm fuzzies to be had by all, so if…

Book publishers do not "get" the concept of the Long Tail

Chad points to an article about the way book publishers are still clinging to the old ways of doing business and are, thus, suspicious of the whol Long Tail idea. My copy of the book arrived a few weeks ago and is waiting (in a long line) to be read in the future, but I have read John Anderson's blog for quite a while now and I think I grok the idea of Long Tail. It applies to blogs, just as much as it applies to sales of movies, music or books. As for books, the future is publishing-on-demand. No need for stokpiling books. If you use a publisher like Lulu.com, you can easily publish your…

SPORE Creature

The long awaited game Spore is coming out soon. The Creature Creator is now available, but a bunch of us got it in advance (see PZ, Brian, erv, Chad, Brian....) and got to play a little bit. I can't wait for the game itself, although, as others have pointed out, the game is not really about evolution. It is, like Pokemon, using the term 'evolution' to describe 'metamorphosis'. All the changes happen to a single individual during an enormously long lifetime. This is one of the basic misunderstandings of evolution by creationists - they missed the memo that evolution operates at the level…

linkedy links vii

swine 'flu update Iceland's elections and other randomness Yeah, lots of swine flu links, and most of you by now know about Revere. But, linking performs an intrinsic function in and of itself. Wiki entry on H1N1 '09 'flu outbreak Swine flu's ticket to ride Swine flu: what you don't know may hurt us all Swine Flu: thoughts for the day - Revere Revere is on this - read the comments to his posts also Tara is back and on it Corpus Callosum explains what pandemic level numbers mean Neuroenhancers: provocative post on better living through chemistry - but will it make us blog bette? Chad on…

Houston, We Have a Problem

The problem is "What should Chad do/ see in the evenings while he's at DAMOP next week?" This is the major physics conference in my field, so my days will be pretty well booked up with talks and posters, but there's not much after 6pm other than food and socializing. If there's some not-to-be-missed Houston thing to do (a bar, restaurant, live music venue, etc.) in the evening, I'm open to suggestions. The boundary values constraining this particular problem are: 1) I'll be staying in the Hyatt Regency downtown, and 2) I will not have a car. I don't promise I'll be able to follow any and all…

Not notable

The NY Times has published a list of the 100 most notable books of the year. I'm feeling inadequate because, while I read a lot of books, not one of them happened to be on this particular list. I'm thinking that I'd better rush out and get one that is on the list, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard, because that looks like it might be awfully handy at this point. Of course, I've got an excuse. Most of the books I've read are science books, and as Chad notes, not one science book made the cut. I guess science was just un-notable and uninteresting this year. Or perhaps…

Is Peter a better school Principle?

Scibling Chad weighs in on the discussion between Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum among others, over whether firing teachers would improve the schools. Kevin wonders whether principals would know enough about teacher performance to know which ones to fire. Kleiman observes that "that discussion leaves out what seems to me the most important fact: For current wages and under current working conditions, there's no ready supply of good teachers to replace those who would be fired if we made firing teachers easier." And Chad rightly notes that: The incompetent teacher trope is one of the standard…

Ask me an easy question too!

Between the fact that I'm still not completely recovered from my epically awful day last Friday and the blogging lethargy that always comes as my summer blogging break approaches, all the blogging-related brain cells I have left are completely fried. Fortunately, Chad comes to the rescue with a great idea! I'll run this more or less the same way he's doing it: Ask me any relatively straight forward question here in the comments and I'll answer it either in the comments or in it's own post. Think questions that I could answer in a paragraph or so. No topic restrictions -- library stuff, pop…

Austin, We Have a Problem

The problem is, "What is Chad going to do in Austin, Texas on Thursday night?" I have recently been appointed to the APS Committee on Informing the Public, which is having a meeting in Austin this Thursday, January 14th. Of course, as neither Austin nor Albany is a major airport, the travel to and from Austin takes up pretty much an entire day on either end, so I'll be staying over Wednesday and Thursday nights, and leaving Friday afternoon. I've got dinner plans for Wednesday night, and I'm going to meet a former student for lunch on Friday, but I have no concrete plans for Thursday night.…

Old Tunes Update

Two music-related follow-up items: Over on her LiveJournal, Kate has a more complete concert report from the Springsteen show, including a full set list, and some links to Springsteen resources. Elsewhere in blogdom, the Blog on Bach is unhappy with my Old Tunes Experiment. The author seems to take the whole thing a little too personally, but I'd probably react similarly to somebody showing up in comments to start dogging Bob Dylan or the Afghan Whigs. Anyway, a couple of clarifications behind the cut: First of all, I didn't say that I disliked Copland and Reich-- the only thing I said I…

Links for 2009-08-15

Making Light: Panels and parlor games "So all you lucky devils went to Worldcon and I didn't. And now I get to read panel reports, which are always both fun and tantalizingly vague. So let's have a game of it. What fictional characters would you put on a panel, what would you have them talk about, and how would the panel go, do you think?" (tags: SF conventions games blogs making-light) Alternate history | Books | A.V. Club "British essayist William Hazlitt once observed that only mankind is capable of noticing the difference between how things are and how they might have been. It's both…

Bangladesh no longer the most corrupt country!

Bangladesh is no longer the most corrupt country in the world!!!. Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Guinea, Iraq, Myanmar and Haiti are tops. Boy, and I am proud to be an American, after all, we helped Iraq attain the status of being the 3rd most corrupt nation in the world! Seeing as how millions have died in the Congo since 1996, methinks we need another intervention, and perhaps we help Congo ascend the ranks a bit? Who knows, can't you imagine a scenario 5 years down the road when Americans troops have to stand down and call off a search for their cannibalized…

ScienceBlogs Channel Photos, Week of May 27-June 2

The large versions of this week's channel photos are bigger and better than ever. (Have a photo you'd like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag "sbhomepage" to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an "attribution only" or "share and share alike" Creative Commons license so that we can use it.) First photo here, the rest below the fold. Life Science. A male Mandarin duck enjoys a swim. From Flickr, by law_keven Physical Science. The polished surface of Brazilian eudialyte. From Flickr, by kevinzim Environment. From Flickr, by…

Science in the 21st Century

Bee and Michael and Chad and Eva and Timo and Cameron will be there. And so will I. And many other interesting people. Where? At the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ontario) on Sep. 8th-12th 2008. And it will be fun. This is the blurb of the meeting: Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these…

1E 0657-56

As predicted, the NASA telecon on Chandra results was on followup studies of the "bullet cluster". Press release is here. Lots of pretty pictures. "This is the type of result that future theories will have to take into account," said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. As opposed to the other type of results? ;-) As I recall there are two types of results: observational and theoretical. Seriously, the selling point is that they see the baryons in the hot gas (which dominates the normal matter in these clusters - they see the galaxies too, of course, but they don't…

Uncertain Creepiest Songs

Chad has one of those lazy blog polls which he is so good at, asking for the "creepiest songs" - the comment thread is an interesting read So here are some youtube videos of some of my candidates - do not click if you are easily disturbed The Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight The last verse is particularly disturbing, I don't know how many people have caught all the implications in it Rhoda Daka and the Specials - The Boiler This is not the most melodic song ever, but it is the only song that I have been ordered to turn off as a matter of urgency when it came up on a mix tape. It…

New Toys

Well, I'm back in Texas and just in time for Steve Jobs to introduce new toys I can't afford. At the risk of turning Chad's blog into an Apple advertisement, every time I pass an Apple store, it takes significant willpower to not walk out of there with a new iPhone. I find it endlessly amusing to load up my papers on the demo models -- yes, I am easily amused. A certain theorist was showing his off at Aspen, too. Well, you don't want a phone with your iPod? You can now get an iPod touch, WiFi included. 8 and 16 gigs. iPod Nano? Smaller with really tiny video. Old school iPods? 160 gigs now.…

Stop drinking that fake water!

The world is full of people selling products that are nothing but advertising, like those silly "power balance" bracelets that do not give you either power or balance. Add another one to the list: Real Water. Did you know that going through a pipe strips water of its electrons? That lots of the foods we eat are lacking electrons? Well, Real Water is good for you because it adds extra electrons! The Guardian has an excellent take-down of their claims. Now the real question is whether an expose by some science nerd will outweigh celebrity endorsements by Paul Oakenfold, Melanie Brown, and Chad…

This warp drive is not eco-friendly

I am not even close to qualified enough to critique this paper, but I did find it interesting. The authors speculate about how you could create a warp drive -- an engine for faster than light travel -- by creating a bubble of expansion and contraction in spacetime. They speculate that an advanced enough civilization could in theory do so. However, I was particularly struck by this sentence: Assuming some arbitrarily advanced civilization were able to create such an effect we might postulate that this civilization were able to utilize the most efficient method of energy production - matter…

CNN: Cutting Science, and Kicking It On the Way Out the Door

It seems just days ago that we learned CNN is cutting its science unit, including Miles O'Brien, who took global warming very seriously. And then last night, a guy who wasn't cut, meteorologist Chad Myers, popped off as follows: "You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant...Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big - I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or we're going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure." This was part of a Lou Dobbs program that also featured a global…

Bye, bye, Expelled

This coming Friday will mark the beginning of the summer 2008 movie season, the first big-budget film to make an appearance being Iron Man. What does that mean for the unfunny and atrocious propaganda piece Expelled? If the theaters near me are any indication, it means that Stein's film flunked at the box office and is being expelled to make room for summer blockbusters. Of the three theaters that carried the film in my area, all of them are going to drop it this coming Friday, although I'm sure Expelled will soon re-appear on DVD. The fact that Expelled is getting dropped from theaters doesn…