December 26, 2007
Mere days after the skinned and beheaded remains of a Siberian tiger were found in a Chinese zoo, a Siberian tiger in the San Francisco zoo jumped the moat around its exhibit area and attacked three visitors, killing one. Police shot and killed the tiger, so we can only speculate about any link…
December 24, 2007
The jazz great was 82. The Times obituary reveals that he played trumpet and piano as a youth, but that a bout with TB forced him to choose the piano. He excelled as a jazz pianist, and played with many of top jazz talent over the course of his seven decade career.
"Don Cha Go Way Mad" by Ella…
December 21, 2007
Way back in April of 2004, I wrote the following note to Sam Brownback:
I'm writing to you because you sit on the subcommittee which oversees the Treasury. I just saw an AP report that, since 1990, the Treasury has only opened 93 enforcement actions on terrorism financing, resulting in $9,425 in…
December 20, 2007
WITH BONUS DOUBLE DACTYL and no limerick.
Higgledy Piggledy
Michael J. Behe (phud)
sees in bacteria
wee little boats.
Reducing complex fla-
gellomachinery
weakens religion which
Behe promotes.
December 19, 2007
In an arrogant and counterproductive move, the E.P.A. denied California's request for a permission to regulate vehicle greenhouse gas emission:
The Bush administration said Wednesday night that it would deny California's bid to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than federal law required as…
December 19, 2007
The New York Times reports: Congress Votes to Spare Millions From Alternative Tax:
By 352 to 64, the House voted to shield about 21 million Americans from being hit by the alternative minimum tax.
No, they didn't. But it takes until the 8th paragraph to find that out:
House Democrats angrily…
December 17, 2007
Ten U.S. Senators stood up against a pointless expansion of secret wiretapping. Fourteen missed the vote, including several candidates for the Presidency:
The heroes:
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)…
December 14, 2007
Though observers had thought Kansas AG Paul Morrison was digging in to fight for his reputation, he announced his resignation today, effective January 31. Kathleen Sebelius will name his successor.
Chris Biggs, who lost to Phill Kline in 2002, is among those mentioned as being on the short list of…
December 13, 2007
Philll Kline to investigate AG Morrison's alleged improprieties.
I must say that I don't see Kline's logic here. Morrison may well have done something wrong, and if so, his enemies' best move would be to sit back and let him fall apart on his own, and to force the Democratic governor to follow…
December 13, 2007
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm satisfied with the results of this online doohickey from the Golden Compass website:
HT: Grrrrrrrrrrl.
December 13, 2007
Like various fancy bloggers and very serious people, I'm in favor of a debate among the presidential candidates about science and science policy.
Mark Hoofnagle has added some good points, addressing common concerns others have expressed about the idea.
Mike the Mad Biologist remains on the fence…
December 13, 2007
The Newton of Info was meek;
permission to copy did seek.
The Crimson refused.
Animations, he used.
And Harvard cracked down on the geek.
With BONUS DOUBLE DACTYL below the fold.
Higgledy Piggledy
William Dembski at-
tempted to twist math so
God he could seek.
Booted from Baylor, the
free-lunching…
December 12, 2007
Greg Orman filed papers to run against Pat "Memory Pills" Roberts in the US Senate race. Roberts ran unchallenged 6 years ago, but will face a strong challenge this time.
AG Morrison is accused of carrying on an affair with a staffer from his days as Johnson County DA, who also alleges various…
December 10, 2007
I'm sorry to hear you might be having ice storms tomorrow. If it's any consolation, I've stopped wearing sandals, and sometimes have to put on a long sleeved shirt in the evenings.
This is the sort of thing I will, in some sense of the term, miss:
December 10, 2007
A bunch of bloggers and some other fancy folks have gotten together to endorse a simple request:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the…
December 8, 2007
Casey Luskin continues his misguided complaints about ISU's decision not to grant Guillermo Gonzalez tenure. He approvingly quotes this passage, originally by Wired:
Though out-of-context email excerpts can be misleading, statements like "this is not a friendly place for him to develop further his…
December 6, 2007
There once was a man from Seattle
Who engaged evolution in battle.
When the dust settled down
his work, it was found,
Was made of all hat and no cattle.
NOW WITH BONUS DOUBLE DACTYL!
Higgledy Piggledy
Guillermo Gonzalez.
"God-privileged planet" books
made him his name.
Tenure's refused, so this…
December 5, 2007
For a while, I had this plan to follow up on my synecdoche post from a few days ago with a post about the revelation that the Bush administration actually knew that Iran stopped its nuclear program in 2003, and had known that for months, while still ratcheting up the rhetoric. I was going to make…
December 4, 2007
It's been days since the public became aware that Chris Comer, an award-winning science educator in the Texas Education Agency, was fired for daring to forward an email announcement of a talk about why intelligent design isn't science. Coverage of the story has hit the AP wires, the pages of USA…
December 4, 2007
As fair a definition as any of Newtonism.
Suck Science on FunnyOrDie.com
I think that we can probably fit Intelligent Vacuuming into the "big tent" of Intelligent Falling. Questions about whether objects are pushed or pulled can safely be left until after we destroy the naturalism of modern…
December 2, 2007
Noah Shachtman quotes General Petraeus:
In one part of the country, the military is reinforcing the society, building things; in another, it's breaking them — waging "major combat operations" that aren't all that different from what might have gone down in 2003.
As I understand it, the "Mission…
November 29, 2007
Chris Comer's firing has been getting a lot of attention, and one question keeps getting asked: "What kind of soul-torturing electronic missive about an academic talk could be so dastardly as to result in someone getting fired merely for forwarding it?"
Read on only if you are prepared to enter a…
November 28, 2007
The Austin American Statesman reports that Ms. Chris Comer, Texas state director of science curriculum, was fired after forwarding an email announcing a talk about intelligent design in the Austin area. The talk "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," was by Barbara Forrest, a historian and…
November 28, 2007
Q: Mr. former Attorney General, would you be willing to be waterboarded:
A: "The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do"
Q: Indeed. Can you think of a less awkward way to phrase that?
A: Hmm.
Q: Friedrich Nietzsche famously claimed "That which does not kill us…
November 28, 2007
Julie MacDonald was a civil engineer inexplicably appointed to oversee the Fish and Wildlife Service. During her reign, she rewrote the scientific assessments of Interior Department biologists, sent confidential documents to a virtual friend on an online role-playing game and colluded with…
November 27, 2007
Billy Dembski, the Isaac Newton of Information, is in trouble. He took an animation that Harvard University commissioned from XVIVO, modified it in various ways (or used a copy someone else modified), put a new title on it, and used it without permission of either Harvard or XVIVO. It appears he…
November 27, 2007
When did conservatives become moral relativists? It was always a petty slander when they placed that label on liberals, but it seems so odd that the torture debate of the last month resulted in such unambiguous moral relativism from staunch conservatives.
For instance, Patterico responded to…
November 22, 2007
While I'll be doling out particular thanks to individuals today, I want to take a moment while the turkey roasts to thank you, dear readers.
When I started this blog, it was basically a way to stop clogging the email boxes of family and friends with my frustration at political events in the world…
November 19, 2007
Krauze is confused. How could scientists think the extermination of the human race over the course of a few decades would be bad, bad, bad, while thinking that the gradual extinction of the species over the course of millions of years would be inevitable and of no great concern.
It's the same…
November 19, 2007
While the shirt preshrunk is peddling does nothing for me, I can't argue with this:
Now say what you will about zombieism, but at least it’s an ethos. Well, okay — it’s not so much an ethos as it is an unrelenting, ravenous craving for brains.
I feel that way about creationism sometimes. I start…
