Hey, there’s some cool stuff out there:
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A new one! Carnival of Evolution #1
And of course, if there’s anything else you want to talk about, this is the thread to do it in.
Hey, there’s some cool stuff out there:
A new one! Carnival of Evolution #1
And of course, if there’s anything else you want to talk about, this is the thread to do it in.
I mentioned this before, but time is running out and the full allotment of money hasn’t been used up yet. If you go to the Big Think site and watch a video about inspiring scientists, Pfizer will spend a dollar on DonorsChoose. The videos are actually pretty good, they aren’t just commercials, and it’s an easy way to donate to a worthy cause by investing nothing but a tiny amount of time.
So McCain has picked Sarah Palin as VP. Supposedly she has some credibility as a good choice for dealing with energy issues, but near as I can tell she’s of the drill-in-marginal-areas school, not someone who’s going to pursue alternative energy sources, and is going to be a favorite of the oil companies — Dick Cheney with a less evil face. Worst of all, from my perspective, she also has a history of pandering to creationist ignorance, promoting the bogus ‘teach the controversy’ nonsense in the absence of any real scientific controversy.
Guess I won’t be voting Republican this year.
Scienceblogs.com is about to hit one of those arbitrary round-number milestones: sometime soon, someone will make the one millionth comment. Our generous Seed overlords wish to mark this event with celebrations all over the world, and are planning to bestow upon us small sums of money for the purpose of purchasing refreshments at gatherings of bloggers and readers near the places where our physical forms abide.
In other words, we get to have a party and Seed will pay for the beer.
So Greg Laden and I are going to organize a joint party — if I tried to have one in Morris, the contrast with my readership would make me look sad — so we’re going to get together somewhere in the Twin Cities area some evening.
The best time for me will be the evening of Thursday, 18 September, because that’s when I’ll be driving through on my way to Madison anyway. Now we’re looking for a nice venue: something with seating for a throng, that’s not too noisy (we’ll provide the noise, instead of a football game on the big screen or a band on the stage), and with good food and beer, somewhere near the Twin Cities, and where some of you readers might actually show up. Make suggestions here and at Greg’s place and we’ll pull it together.
I’ve spent my evening curled up with a wracking cough and nasty pains in places I didn’t know I could hurt — I think I sprained my diaphragm — and while stumbling dumbly through the web, I belatedly found the story of the recent Georgia bigfoot. I know, it’s last week’s news, but I’m feeling a little addled.
Anyway, it brought back old memories. Way back when I was a teenager, I used to build balsa wood model airplanes in my grandparents’ attic. It was a good deal: my family didn’t have to deal with the smell, I didn’t have to worry about my brothers and sisters stomping on a delicate wing, and Grandma would bring me cookies and milk. There was also a stack of my grandfather’s manly men magazines to browse while I was waiting for that last coat of dope to dry. I don’t know if the genre is still around today, but in the 60s and 70s, at least, there were these magazines like Argosy and Saga that were full of manly stories of manly fellows braving dangers and hunting and exploring, with the occasional woman in a bikini lolling on the beach as the manly frogmen fought vicious sharks, and such like. One of the stories I recall most vividly was the Minnesota Iceman, which the article claimed was the most amazing evidence for the existence of bigfoot ever. There were several accompanying photographs of the poor guy in full color, frozen in a defensive pose, one arm thrown up over his head, with a bright splash of red over one eye, where he had been purportedly shot.
It made an impression. I recall reading up on cryptozoology quite a bit after that, trying to figure out whether it was real or not. I regretfully came to the conclusion eventually that it was a complete fraud, largely because I couldn’t find any legitimate scientific sources that had anything to say about it, and even in my teens I knew that Argosy was not a credible source of scientific information. Curiously, I now learn that creationists haven’t figured that out; Answers in Genesis uses the Minnesota Iceman as an example of scientific fakery ala Piltdown Man, accusing “experienced zoologists and scientific journals” of going out on a limb for a bogus missing link. At least now I can place their scientific expertise as somewhere significantly below mine…at the age of 15.
The Minnesota Iceman was a fake by a disreputable carnie. What about the Georgia Bigfoot? The lesson learned there is that people have gotten stupider since the 1960s. This bigfoot corpse was a graceless fake that was exposed within hours by the clever dicks at the JREF, and was concocted and promoted by a pair of blustering oafs named Rick Dyer and Matt Whitton, who have taken the unfortunate Southern redneck stereotype and amplified it into an embarrassment. It’s a rubber suit stuffed with dead animal parts. If I’d seen the photos of this thing at an impressionable age, I would not have been at all impressed — they were pathetic. The most thorough (if rather rambling) account is at a bigfoot site, and it’s damning. The creators weren’t just con-artists, they were stupid, incompetent con-artists…and people still fell for it. That’s the most depressing part of this story. The frauds don’t even have to try anymore, and the suckers line up to give them their money.
His blog is three years old, which as we all know means he has at last emerged from the terrible twos and has reached that period of maximal cuteness. He’s a bit disappointed that the California legislature didn’t issue an official proclamation, so he’ll have to settle for a mere pharyngulation.
Once upon a time, I made some unfortunate remarks about knitting, and I felt like I’d prodded Madame Defarge, which is never a good idea.
But really, I love you guys, and here’s a whole page of cephalopod craft patterns to show it.
The pope has condemned this silly sculpture as blasphemous, and German Catholics are trying to get it removed from display.
They can’t be serious, can they? It’s kitschy and funny. But really, they’re unhappy about this.
The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture.
“Surely this is not a work of art but a blashphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people,” Pahl told Reuters by telephone as the museum board was meeting.
The Vatican letter said that the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.
Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.
So wait…now doing anything with two sticks stuck together at right angles is going to be an affront to “God’s love”? I have been told over and over again by pompous wackaloons that I’m on the shock-jock trajectory, compelled to try and top my outrages against religion in an ever-upward spiral of offense, and that it’s going to be really hard to top cracker abuse. However, it looks like you can piss off the pope just by playing around with a couple of popsicle sticks.
Jennifer Oullette has put together a pop-sci book meme (and John Lynch has joined in). It’s the usual thing, a long list of books and you’re supposed to highlight the ones you’ve read, this time with the theme being that they’re all about science somehow. I detect a physics bias in Ms. Oullette’s choices, however, despite the excellent beginning — and it’s to that I ascribe my poor performance. That and some weird choices: since when is Neuromancer pop-sci? Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash would be better choices if we’re going to throw fiction in the mix, or Sterling’s Schismatrix. If we open the door to SF, though, the howling hordes will pour in and we’ll never get anything done.
Anyway, here’s my copy of the list:
Jennifer did suggest that we make additions, so let’s beef up the biology a bit with a few more off the top of my head (OK, McPhee and Rudwick are geology…but that needs bolstering, too!).