February 13, 2010
Oakland North tagged along with my fiancée and I as we knocked on doors to talk about gay marriage in Hayward a few weeks back. Just in time for Valentine's Day, they've posted a nice story about the current efforts to ensure marriage equality for all, featuring yours truly and my intended.
February 13, 2010
Shorter Martin Cothran: Snow in 49 states:
Winter proves Al Gore is fat.
To quote science policy professor Roger Pielke, Jr. (not always a friend to conventional climate science):
What happens in the weather this week or next tells us absolutely nothing about the role of humans in influencing the…
February 11, 2010
Dog owner fends off raccoon with Samurai sword:
A Fairfield man used a Samurai sword Wednesday afternoon to defend his dog from an attack by what appears to have been a large raccoon.
Perhaps the raccoon's mask confused him into thinking he was being attacked by a ninja?
February 11, 2010
Inventor of Frisbee dies at 90:
Walter Fredrick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died. He was 90.
Morrison's son, Walt, told The Associated Press on Thursday that "old age caught up" with his father and that he also had cancer.
The cause of death, thus, is unknown, but I…
February 11, 2010
For whatever reason, last year's hearings in the Texas Board of Education attacking the basics of science education got less attention than this year's nonsense over social studies and history. The Washington Monthly did a great article on the process last month, and now the New York Times…
February 11, 2010
Steve Fuller (and fuller) writes to ID creationist Bill Dembski's blog about the question Do We Need God To Do Science?:
I debated the question with the historian Thomas Dixon, who basically holds that while we may have needed God to do science, we donât need the deity anymore. My own view is that…
February 10, 2010
Start by installing a madman as president, then invade another country. Pretty soon, you get a soldier waterboarding his daughter:
An Army sergeant who served in Iraq for 15 months has been restricted to his Washington military base after being accused of waterboarding his 4-year-old daughter…
February 8, 2010
In May, 2008 creationist bigot Martin Cothran complained at the Disco. 'Tute blog about John Derbyshire reviewing a shitty movie without having watched it:
That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it. This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review…
February 8, 2010
From Nature's news section, Philip Ball reports on research showing Dog bites man Morals don't come from God:
[In] a new paper by psychologists Ilkka Pyysiäinen of the University of Helsinki and Marc Hauser of Harvard University ⦠individuals presented with unfamiliar moral dilemmas show no…
February 7, 2010
A few weeks ago, televangelist Pat Robertson got in some righteous trouble for claiming that Haiti deserved its earthquake devastation because Haitians two hundred years ago "sw[ore] a pact with the devil."
Turns out, Robertson knows something about making deals with the devil:
Former Liberian…
February 5, 2010
This week put to rest a significant part of the anti-vaccine movement's claim to scientific legitimacy. A paper purporting to show a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism rates was retracted by The Lancet. The journal, which published the 1998 paper, based the…
February 5, 2010
Argument over cigarette led to Antioch slaying:
Police have arrested a suspect in the Antioch slaying of a man who was shot after he refused to give a cigarette to the alleged killer's friend, investigators said Friday.
Stagolee has nothing on him.
February 5, 2010
Shorter Tom Tancredo at the Teabagger convention:
Things would be better if we elected Strom Thurmond president brought back Jim Crow.
No⦠really:
The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and "the cult of multiculturalism…
February 2, 2010
Ben Stein, for those of you who have forgotten, played a bit role in the classic '80s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He played the annoying economics teacher, a role he was uniquely qualified for by being boring and having been bored by his father, an accomplished economist. Stein parlayed his…
February 1, 2010
Via Lamebook via BoingBoing, an update of the classic beachside homily:
"The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand is when I was off kicking the janitor in the 'nads."
February 1, 2010
Bruce Chapman, head of the Discover Institute, has a problem. He objects to Richard Dawkins calling out Pat Robertson as a gigantic blowhard. And also doesn't think Dawkins should do things to help the Haitian people (as evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that Chapman and Disco. have taken no…
January 31, 2010
Scott Roeder found guilty of first-degree murder in death of George Tiller:
A jury took less than 40 minutes Friday to find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of abortion provider George Tiller in a [Wichita] church [â¦] last May. [â¦]
The murder conviction carries a…
January 28, 2010
As the Times puts it: Former Justice OâConnor Sees Ill in Election Finance Ruling:
âGosh,â she said, âI step away for a couple of years and thereâs no telling whatâs going to happen.â
Justice OâConnor criticized the recent decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, only obliquely,…
January 26, 2010
Courtesy of the San Mateo County Times: Police find cache of weapons, alligators and suspected explosives in South San Francisco home:
Lazaro Ismael Leon Jr., who is allegedly a Norteno gang member, entered his [not guilty] plea Monday in San Mateo County Superior Court and Commissioner Stephanie…
January 26, 2010
Darwin biopic Creation premiered in seven movie theaters across the country last weekend, earning $53,073, an average of $7,582. That's not a lot of money, but at roughly $10/ticket, this works out to 760 viewers per theater, a solid showing. I know the theater I saw it at was full for their 7 pm…
January 25, 2010
I've had my disagreements with Martin Cothran over the years. He's a bigoted man, proud of teaching logic at a private school, yet utterly dependent on logical fallacies in his actual argumentation. He wants creationism taught in public schools. He dislikes gay people and anyone else who…
January 22, 2010
Having blown an easy win in the Massachusetts Senate race, DC Democrats seem intent on blowing the dreams of millions of Americans, and the best chance of reforming the health insurance industry to make it more equitable â a policy long held up as a major reason to vote Democratic. The Times…
January 21, 2010
This weekend marks the U.S. premiere of Creation, featuring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma. It's an adaptation of Darwin descendant Randal Keynes' Annie's Box, an account of Darwin's struggle to decide whether to publish the Origin while overcoming the death…
January 21, 2010
I've never been more ashamed of the Democratic party than I am right now, watching the idiots in Congress piss away the opportunity to expand insurance coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans, to protect the insurance coverage of people who have preexisting conditions, to save Medicare by…
January 19, 2010
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Scott Brown will be a U.S. Senator until 2012.
Seriously. Ted Kennedy's seat went to a teabagging healthcare opponent who voted against 9/11 rescue personnel.
On the bright side, Joe Lieberman is no longer the 60th…
January 18, 2010
There's much that needs to be done to assist the recovery in Haiti, but the consensus of those on the ground is that what's needed now is money. Don't mail blankets or whatever, just let the aid agencies buy what they need and ship it in. The airports and seaports are clogged and there's minimal…
January 18, 2010
Some time back, we had an interesting discussion about whether fiction contains truth or not. I tended to think it did, though a different sort than that found in science textbooks, while some commenters argued that no, fiction might have metaphor and analogy and references to the author's state…
January 18, 2010
Max Lampenfeld of Lehigh Township is upset. The Allentown, PA Morning Call had an illustration referencing the Big Bang, and Max won't take that lying down:
The disturbing part of the article is the way the ''Big Bang'' is presented as fact, when it is only a theory and cannot be proven, at least…
January 18, 2010
In his proclamation honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, President Obama reminds us of the value of service, and of the value of education. "Education can unlock a child's potential and remains our strongest weapon against injustice and inequality," the President writes.
Education was at…
January 15, 2010
According to the Oakland Tribune: Bag of bones goes missing in Atherton.
And yeah, it was a real bag of human bones. A police search and rescue dog was doing a demonstration, after which, according to the Tribune "the organizers accidentally left the bones behind overnight inside a black plastic…
