Accidental
tqa | March 16, 2010
Via GeekDad, I just discovered the blog of the Illinois Poison Control Center. More specifically, I discovered the "Day in the Life of a Poison Center" feature they did last month. As medical blogging goes, this was brilliant. They posted very brief descriptions of each of the calls that came into their center in a 24 hour period. The Tweetable little descriptions capture the stress, fear, and humor that is an integral part of providing emergency health care.
Some of the calls were scary to read, even in two-sentence bursts. These were ones that contained the phrase "child got into" - or…
tqa | November 13, 2009
When attempting to score cheap political points on the backs of dead American soldiers in your legal filings, it is generally considered to be a good idea to take the time to get at least one or two of the basic factual details correct. Like maybe the number killed in the incident you are referring to. Or their ages. Or their gender. This type of thing just doesn't cut it:
If someone were to have common sense, brains and strength of character to challenge allegiance of Nidal Malik Hasan in court, after he made numerous anti-American and antimilitary statements, maybe 12 young boys wouldn't…
tqa | October 13, 2009
As some of you might recall, I've been keeping tabs on some of the continuing court antics of Dentist/Lawyer Orly Taitz, High Priestess of the Birther Movement. Her frivolous court filings - which start out at chiropteran excrement insane and go downhill from there - have been providing me with a great deal of entertainment lately. Of course, that's at least partially because I don't actually have to waste time and effort responding to them, and can stop reading them anytime I want (really, I can).
Apparently, not everyone has been as amused by Taitz's apparent inability to grasp subtle…
tqa | October 5, 2009
As I wrote that title, I realized that it's probably insufficiently informative - there are, after all, multiple parallels between Intelligent Design proponents and the crackpots dedicated defenders of the Constitution who continue to insist that Barack Obama is not eligible to be the President. Both groups, for example, have a blind devotion to a concept that has no actual basis in reality. Both appear to be remarkably skeptical toward the enormous amounts of evidence challenging their views while simultaneously demonstrating a remarkable credulity toward any evidence that might possibly be…
tqa | April 28, 2009
I'm still trying to fully digest the implications of Specter's Switch, but there was something in one of the Politico articles on the defection that I can't resist commenting on now:
In 2001, Republicans still had the House and the White House. Now they have neither. Instead, they have a Republican National Committee chairman who is drawing weak reviews for gaffes...
What? Are they kidding? Steele's gaffes get great reviews. There's nobody in American politics today who can manage to jump, stuff both feet in his mouth, and land flat on his ass in front of the camera the way Michael…
tqa | April 28, 2009
The BBC is reporting that some people are not thrilled about calling the influenza virus that's currently causing alarm around the world "swine flu". Unfortunately, there's a slight possibility that the alternative suggestion wasn't entirely well thought out.
One Monday, Israel's deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, who belongs to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, said the outbreak should be renamed "Mexican flu" in deference to Jewish and Muslim sensitivities over pork.
Anyone else just facepalm?
tqa | April 22, 2009
After my earlier antics, this seemed apropos. Particularly given the conversation that took place after my wife found the directions I hadn't read.
Jill: I thought you said it was a technical problem!
Tim: Technically, I was the problem.
Home Improvement
Episode 1.09 Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
tqa | April 22, 2009
Representative Joe Barton is feeling very good about himself right now. He's convinced that he "baffled" a Nobel Laureate with a "basic question." During a congressional hearing earlier today, he asked Energy Secretary Stephen Chu how the oil got to Alaska. Here's the YouTube clip of the exchange. For your convenience, I've done a quick transcript.
Barton: Dr. Chu, I don't wanna leave you out, you're our... you're our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?
Chu: [Nervous-sounding…
tqa | April 22, 2009
There are two pictures in today's installment. Both were taken just a few minutes ago. The second is a close-up of the area circled in red in the first picture.
I know a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but right now the only one that springs to mind is "poignant". Actually, "oops" would be appropriate, too. So would "Just call me Charlie Brown." Not to mention "Damn, I didn't know it would fly that high." And, of course, "I guess I owe my son a new airplane now."
tqa | April 16, 2009
This one falls into the "silly-looking things we do in the name of science" category:
This picture was taken when I was helping a fellow grad student out with her project. She was banding and taking a blood sample from the Laysan Albatross that had been sitting on that nest. My job was to stand still and cast enough of a shadow to keep direct sunlight from overheating the egg until the bird was back on the nest.
tqa | April 7, 2009
Since I'm currently out of town, original content is going to be in short supply for a few days. Fortunately, there are a few things I've written over the years that I think people might still enjoy (or at least tolerate). Since they didn't get read much when I first posted them, I thought I'd give them another chance. This one threatens to get a bit recursive - it's a trip down memory lane to look at another trip down memory lane. It was originally posted at the old blog on 6 September 2005.
Just when I had begun to think that we had pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel of…
tqa | April 5, 2009
This is a short one, and it might not technically be a quote, but it was written down and it's wrong on so many levels I just had to share it:
Evolve. Use a condom every time.
Advertising slogan seen on a Trojans display
tqa | April 4, 2009
Nothing too serious today - I pulled this one from my old blog when I was looking for things to repost:
"Try to get it near the center, daddy. That's the good spot."
-my daughter [then age 8], in all seriousness, as I'm playing darts.
Obama "Indicted" by Georgia "Citizen Grand Jury" That's Amusingly Ignorant of Basic American History
tqa | April 2, 2009
The wackier inhabitants of WingNutDaily are apparently thrilled by the news that some nutjob in Georgia scoured his home state until he found 24 other people nuttier than himself, swore them in as a "Citizen Grand Jury", took "sworn testimony" from various birther loons, and "indicted" President Obama. (He won't say what they indicted him for, citing the need to maintain secrecy so as to not impede the forthcoming prosecution.) They've "served" the "indictment" on various Federal and Georgia officials, and are threatening that unless action is taken within 40 days, they may:
...distrain…
tqa | March 26, 2009
Like many people, I was amused by the "budget" that the Republicans in Congress unveiled today. If you count both the front and back covers, it's 19 pages long - but even that's a generous estimate. Three of the pages are cover pages for sections of the document. Random figures with little to no relationship to anything in the text are used to fluff out the space, margins are suspiciously large in places, font size varies - basically, think of anything you've done to a term paper at 3 am the morning it was due when you were five pages short and out of ideas.
But there are plenty of other…
tqa | March 26, 2009
Some of you might be familiar with the work of Walter ReMine. He's been around the fringes of the online creation-evolution thing for quite a while now. His typical schtick involves the relentless self-promotion of his self-published book The Biotic Message, which he claims represents a revolutionary new origins theory of some sort.
It's been a while since ReMine was last on my radar screen, but he's posted a couple of items over at Uncommon Descent recently. These are advertised as the first two parts of a multiple-part essay of unspecified length. He promises that this essay will…
tqa | March 23, 2009
Tonight's entry in Conservapedia Foolishness is my favorite kind of entry to write - one where someone else did all of the work.
Over at Religion, Sets, and Politics, Josh Zelinsky has a fantastic - and amusing - look at a Conservapedia discussion thread where Andy Schlafly apparently redefines "liberal" to mean "less conservative than him", and says that his main problem with a British political party that his own website describes as "Neo-Nazi" is that the party also supports universal health care.
tqa | March 10, 2009
Tonight's episode in the Conservapedia Follies comes in the form of their page on the "Religion of Barack Obama". Specifically, it comes from a section of the article that attempts to "correct" what the Conservapediots perceive to be "errors" in an article about Obama and religion that appeared in the "liberal magazine Newsweek." The whole article is, typically enough, amusingly bad, but there are two entries that are particularly enchanting:
Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother [correction: mother who abandoned Christianity] and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father [correction:…
tqa | March 9, 2009
Tonight's entry isn't actually from one of Conservapedia's "encyclopedia" articles. Instead, it's from one of their "debate" pages. The topic for the debate is "Women in the Military", and the first entry on the "No" side contains an absolutely fantastic sentence:
Also, there are some jobs that by their nature are better suited to the female's mind, such as Air Traffic Controlman.
tqa | March 4, 2009
Today, we've got a case of "you keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means." On a page that highlights news stories that "are mainly about Liberal hypocrisy", they report:
Refugees given homes, education, welfare benefits by Britain; in return, the Islamic terrorists plotted mass murder.