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pharyngula | December 12, 2006Weird. How many of you parents ever thought you'd be glad to hear your kid was getting called into the principal's office?
Oh, man, this homophobic student, Andrew Jallo, has discovered Skatje's blog and is truly making a fool of himself—he has discovered sock puppetry, but doesn't have the slightest idea how to cover his tracks. The Drama!
pharyngula | December 12, 2006Ah, the pleasures of living in a small town in Red America: the high schools are fertile fields for fostering hate, and now it's facilitated by technology, like Facebook, that allows them to sow it far and wide. My daughter is on a rampage right now, upset because her erstwhile peers at the high school have been putting their bigotry proudly on display. There is currently some ferocious babble going on in a Morris Area High School facebook site, and here's one of the more outrageous comments:
Okay this is really random but it has to deal with the comment about homosexuality issue that Sibley…
pharyngula | December 6, 2006Hmmm…there are a couple of regional links that have popped up recently.
Tyler Cowen writes a "my best friends are Minnesotans" post. Does everyone who praises the state have to mention Prince and Fargo and Bob Dylan?
Hey, there's a Drinking Liberally Holiday Party next week at the 331 Club in Minneapolis. I don't think I can make it, but that is also my last day of classes, so maybe I'll have to attend my local DL chapter and celebrate.
That local Drinking Liberally chapter is run by Lambo, who has just started his own blog, Forum Focus. He's planning to focus on Forum Communications…
pharyngula | December 6, 2006Hey, Minnesotans—anyone want to tune in to KKMS Christian radio right now? I'm about to be tied up in class stuff for a while, so I'll say more later—it seems we have a new creationist group mobilizing in the state.
I caught a few bits of the radio show (that hurt—it's a fundagelical radio station), and I've also heard from a few readers. There is apparently a billboard in a very prominent place at 12th and Washington along 35W, the freeway that cuts through the center of Minneapolis. This, apparently, is the whole raison d'etre for the organization, to throw up billboards. The founder of…
pharyngula | November 26, 2006Amanda has an interesting article on cities trying to maintain and attract their educated class—and it includes a nice map of the frequency of college graduates by US counties. I just had to point out that it's easy to spot Stevens County, where I live—it's the orange square in a sea of paleness.
It's too bad the huge counties out west make the western part of the country look misleadingly coarse-grained, but still, you can spot the places that attract the highly educated. Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite as easy as plopping a university down somewhere to turn it into a magnet for…
pharyngula | November 21, 2006Watch out, Minnepolitans—I'm going to the bowling alley. Anyone else interested in picking up the physics of bowling?
pharyngula | November 18, 2006What if Stan Lee worked for Chick Publications? You'd get apocalyptic tracts with giant planet-eating space men.
(via Pen-Elayne)
This is all you're getting from me for a while. I just finished a 9 hour long meeting (freaking uncivilized, if you ask me), and next I have to go attend some god-awful Christian propaganda — my daughter is the stage manager for the high school production of "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat", so I have to go — and I suspect my day is going to continue its trend of ongoing frustration and exasperation. It is in my best interests to avoid further posting to…
pharyngula | November 18, 2006
On Tuesday, I'll be in the Twin Cities to pick up #2 Son for Thanksgiving break, and as long as I'm there, I've been invited to join in the fun of this month's Cafe Scientifique: it's the Physics of Bowling, to be held at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. This has the potential to be very interesting, since they're pitting the best of BRB bowling team against…scientists. They promise that there will be science-based bowling tips, so maybe there's hope. (Anyone else remember Egghead Jr., the smart chicken in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons who excelled at sports by scrawling formulas to calculate…
pharyngula | November 13, 2006Here's a useful tip: if ever you are attacked by giant monsters, you want to call a Minnesotan for help. I think it's the summertime practice in fighting off insectoid swarms that helps.
pharyngula | November 11, 2006I'm ensconced in a comfy chair at the Bell Museum, waiting for the MnCSE Science Education Saturday meeting to start. I'll take notes and be sure to put up a summary later today.
It's not too late to come on down!
pharyngula | November 8, 2006In case any of our biology students read this wacky site, I'll remind you all that there is a meeting for all first-year biology majors this evening at 7:00, at my house (300 College Ave, west of the science building and across the street from LaFave House; we're the place with the lawn that looks like bulldozers and zombies had a war on it). The biology faculty will be there with sweet tasty desserts, and you can ask us anything about classes, careers, science. It's all going to be informal and fun.
If you want, you can meet with other biology students at 6:45 in the bioclub room (1040…
pharyngula | November 7, 2006Really. We Minnesotans are so uncivil that we never read Lileks, we leave that to foreigners with more tolerance for twee jingo. Out here, we see that face in the Star Tribune and we say "Gah, #%$$&!" (or other such un-mild, un-Minnesotan phrases), and turn the page to the comics section…where we mutter other unholy terms of exasperation at Mallard Fillmore. (How the hell did that mindless, unfunny loon* end up in our newspaper?)
*Whether I'm referring to Lileks or the cartoon duck is left as an exercise for the reader.)
pharyngula | November 2, 2006Minnesotans have to choose between Mike Hatch (D) and Tim Pawlenty (R) for governor next week, and someone has noticed that Pawlenty ads have been lacking in substance…so they put together a helpful parody. I don't know, though—this could be a winning issue for Hatch. That kitten in the final frames sure looks tasty.
pharyngula | November 1, 2006On Halloween, I gave a short presentation as our first Cafe Scientifique of the year. The main intent was to introduce our schedule for the year and to give an amusing introduction to the media image of scientists by showing a few movie clips…and to say a few things about how we really ought to be seen.
I've put most of the clips on youtube, so you can see what I was talking about below the fold.
Here's the schedule for the 2006-2007 year.
Fall:
28 November : Theodora Economou: Causation in law and science
Spring:
30 January : The Chemistry Discipline: Chemistry in the home
27 February :…
pharyngula | October 28, 2006I live in the 11th Minnesota senate district, and I'm represented by a Democratic incumbent, Dallas Sams. I am not a fan of Sams; he's one of those pro-life moderate Democrats, not particularly progressive (although he did make the effort to squelch an anti-gay marriage act), and if there'd been an alternative candidate at the Minnesota caucuses, I would have pushed for them over Sams. I will be voting for Sams on November 7th, though—I won't even hesitate.
His opposition is a Republican, Bill Ingebrigtsen. Ingebrigtsen has been sending ads—expensive-looking (he has raised twice as much money…
pharyngula | October 27, 2006For any locals who are curious about that Mike Adams character who gave a talk on campus yesterday, Bartholomew's notes on religion has a good summary of his career as a professional victim. There's also a more complete account of the terrible oppression Adams faced after his response to the 9/11 emails, a story he told in part but at some length yesterday. Funny how he didn't mention that part of the story involving an undergraduate student he'd marry 18 months later…
pharyngula | October 26, 2006I did manage to get to Mike S. Adams' talk here at UMM. It was a packed room (not our biggest lecture room here, but it was filled to capacity) and I arrived late, so I had to stand outside the door to listen in. Kudos to our students, who were polite and attentive, and let him blather on without interruption.
Adams is a slick, fast-talking, folksy guy, and he made the audience laugh quite a bit. He had to talk fast, though, to keep his story from sinking beneath the weight of its improbabilities, and I do wonder how many of our students actually caught on to his inconsistencies.
To summarize…
pharyngula | October 25, 2006My daughter had mentioned something a while back about some speaker named Mike Adams coming to UMM, and that she'd get extra credit for attending, but it didn't sink in until I saw the signs around campus. It's this Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase.
I'm very disappointed in our students. We're far off the beaten track and we don't get that many speakers…
pharyngula | October 24, 2006Perhaps it doesn't fit your stereotypes of what Minnesotans are like, but there are also freaky wild parties with cocaine and huge…huge…well, you know. Watch the video to find out.
I think it's shot in Lake Wobegone, actually.
pharyngula | October 12, 2006She's on YouTube, accusing her opponent of believing in evolution. Wow. That wins me over.