Hot tip for cephalopod fans: the February 2007 issue of Natural History magazine includes a very good article on octopus intelligence and personality.
Mather JA (2007) Eight arms, with attitude. Natural History 116(1):30-36.
Karen Klinzing, a creationist-friendly Republican who lost her run for the Minnesota legislature, has been rewarded by our Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, with a nice cushy job…as Assistant Commissioner of Education.
There’s nothing quite so charming as the sight of a conservative hack getting handed a sinecure, and one from which she can work mischief.
(via Lloyletta)
I’m taking a little downtime from the busy con fun-and-games, and catching up with the various carnival announcements.
I’m here in Michigan for several more hours, then I’m off to the airport for the late flight home. Talk among yourselves.
Here’s a cuisine for a SF con.
Man, it’s so annoying when the little sites take a poke at me, hoping to trigger a strong reaction so that I’ll send lots of traffic their way. It’s pathetic, and you know I can’t resist. This particular site is trying to yank my chain by complaining about my lack of support for Barack Obama, and along the way they confirm my point.
What’s interesting to me about all this is that when you get down to it, Obama presents conservatives with a category error. Democrats are liberal, and therefore cannot be religious, q.e.d. It simply fries their circuits that Obama won’t stick in the pigeonhole they’ve constructed for him. It’s going to be a hard election season for them: As Grillmaster pointed out to me the other day, Edwards, Gore, Clinton, and Obama are all comfortable with the language of religion. The Republican front-runners – McCain, Guilliani and Newt – not so much.
And just for fun, allow me to point out that many folks on the left share the same perspective, albeit from a different angle. A real Democrat can’t be religious!
To be fair to Prof. Myers and those who agree with him, what they’re saying is more properly, “a real Democrat shouldn’t be religious.” They’re entitled to their opinion, whether or not we agree with them.
I’m glad he tried to be fair, although he completely blew it on both attempts. What I said was that I will not support Obama because he is too pious for me, and Pastor Dan is rather freely admitting that the Democratic front-runners are all a squad of name-droppers for God. This is a disaster. When will people learn that the demagoguery of appealing to non-existent super-beings will not do a single thing to correct any of our problems?
While he’s chuckling over how Obama fries Republican circuits, he’s also reinforcing the view that one of the major reasons he is getting a lot of play is precisely because he is a happy god-bot. He’s also glossing over my other complaint about Obama: he hasn’t accomplished much of anything. If he had a commendable congressional record, I’d be willing to overlook his reliance on phantasms and spirits, but he doesn’t have one, and he doesn’t seem willing to work for one, preferring to jump on the shortcut to the presidency that a felicitous charisma and the appeal to superstitious ignorance gives him.
It amuses me that an article called Obama’s Religion Problem proposes to deal with the issue by admitting that he does represent Religion with a capital “R”, but that it isn’t a problem. Wrong. Foolishness is always a problem.
There’s a whiff of armchair psychoanalysis to this article on why religiosity has become such an epidemic in this country, but I think there’s a strong strain of truth running through it.
The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.
This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker’s paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.
Promises of glory and paradise are always cheaper than actually doing anything about worldly problems.
I have been sent official confirmation that Phil Plait has carried through on his promise, and has testifed to the teeming hordes at The Amazing Meeting to the glory that is Pharyngula.
Hooray!
I had sushi with John Scalzi (some guy), Skatje (some girl), and Matt Arnold (a Pensacola Christian College graduate) last night, talked with people for a long time, hung out with noisy nerds, and stayed up later than I usually do. Today is my big day of scheduled panels: alternate patterns of evolution at 11, an evidence for evolution Q&A at 2, Squidblogging at 3, and we’ll attempt to answer the question of where the aliens are at 4. Then it’s partying all night long.
Who knew skiffy geeks could be such wild and crazy party animals?
The squid-blogging confab with Bruce Schneier has been tentatively scheduled for 3:00 Saturday in the con suite on the 15th floor.
Shelley the Republican says:
We conservatives have grown accustomed to liberal activist judges perverting justice for their own evil ends. Last year Judge Jones betrayed us all when he passed his verdict in the Dover school-book case. Shortly afterwards, our dear friend Kent was convicted of tax evasion.
U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers will sentence the Hovinds at 9 a.m for the alleged crime of tax evasion. They claim that he and his lovely wife Jo owe the state almost one million dollars in unpaid taxes. A quick review of the case show that the federal court unfairly denied Hovind’s sensible and truthful defence: Kent owes no tax because everything he “owns” is really property of God. This is a fact that we would all do well to remember!
So please dear friends, join me in prayer this morning. Let us pray to Jesus that Kent and Jo will be allowed to continue their important ministry and continue teaching young scientists about the many flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Prayer doesn’t work, I guess.
Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.
After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:
— Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
— Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.
— Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.
Hovind’s wife, Jo Hovind, also was scheduled to be sentenced. Rodgers postponed her sentencing until March 1 to allow her defense attorney an opportunity to argue possible discrepancies in sentencing guidelines.
Prior to his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind, also known as “Dr. Dino” asked for the court’s leniency.
“If it’s just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach,” Hovind said.
This is very unseemly, but … BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Maybe God just doesn’t answer Republican prayers anymore.
