For all the people saying this massacre couldn’t have happened, and that those who expose it are traitors: let me remind you of My Lai. It has been 38 years, so many have forgotten.
Gary has a link there that will lead you deep into the right wing fever swamp. It’s creepy how those on that increasingly discredited side are more upset that a senator mentioned this than that a 3-year-old girl may have been willfully murdered by our soldiers.
Johnny Depp sure is cute, but the fellow I’m swooning over in the Pirates of the Caribbean trailer is Davy Jones. He can play the organ with his face! (And that is a provocative sentence…)
I’m also impressed that he can summon up the Kraken. It’s like this whole movie is stuffed full of tentacles—I’m going to be there opening day, I think.
We become more cosmopolitan day by day. As of tomorrow, our fair city will have its very own Drinking Liberally chapter (it’s even on the map!). I can walk to it, instead of driving for three hours. Here’s the info:
When: Thursday, May 18, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 or whenever.
Where: Old #1 in Morris, near the horseshoe-shaped part of the bar.
Why: To have a relaxed, informal place for progressive political
discussion and socializing.For more information, visit drinkingliberally.org, or contact local
host Jeff Lamberty (Lambo) at morris@drinkingliberally.org.
Zimmer has a summary of the new analysis of the human and chimpanzee genomes that suggests that human speciation wasn’t sudden (no surprise there, I don’t think), and that our ancestors dallied with chimpanzee ancestors over a fairly prolonged period. I can’t wait to read the creationist response to that!
I haven’t read the paper yet—I’m still waist-deep in grading hell—but the deadline for grade submission is midnight tonight, and then at last I will be a free man again!
You may hear rumors that this is actually a super-secret photo of the real PZ Myers, but you’d be mistaken.
You can tell because I wouldn’t use that non-Mac laptop, ever.
Readers, if you have received a copy of America, Return to God sent in my name, it’s not my doing. Someone is apparently putting my name and email address in the order form as the friendly donor sending that crap out, and I’m now getting outraged email from people who are disgusted with it.
It’s kind of heartening, actually, even if I am getting undeserved blame. A lot of people don’t like that Christianist nonsense.
I’m going to link to a post on Uncommon Descent. I try to avoid that, because I think it is a vile harbor of malign idiocy, but Dembski has just put up something that I think is merely sincerely ignorant. That’s worth correcting. It also highlights the deficiencies of Dembski’s understanding of biology.
Dembski makes a strange argument for ID on the basis of a certain class of experiments in developmental biology.
It’s true: the Minnesota Senate has passed a modification to an education bill that would prohibit the teaching of intelligent design.
16.12 Sec. 4. Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 120B.021, is amended by adding a
16.13 subdivision to read:
16.14 Subd. 2a. Curriculum. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the Department
16.15 of Education, a charter school, and a school district are prohibited from utilizing a
16.16 nonscientifically based curriculum, such as intelligent design, to meet the required science
16.17 academic standards under this section.
This is not a law yet, and I don’t expect it will be. The senate version of the bill has to be reconciled with the house version, and the house version does not include this addendum. It will probably vanish without comment.
I have mixed feelings about it. It’s reasonable to expect that science requirements cannot be met by non-science curricula, and on that principle, the limitation is reasonable. However, I don’t like the idea of politicians with little training in the subject trying to dictate what is and isn’t science. Just say that a course should address the content specified by the state science standards, which were written by a committee of citizen educators and scientists, rather than trying to specify details by way of legal statutes.
Besides, maybe the intelligent design crowd will get off their butts and do experiments and develop evidence that actually makes their wild-ass guess scientific, and then this law would look awfully silly.
(Yeah, I’m smirking cynically and laughing as I write that.)
Amanda Marcotte on Pandagon discusses Sam Harris on Alternet, and they’ve both got smart things to say…but you have got to read the comments. Sam Harris says things like this:
Whoa, it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about my infatuation with cephalopods (since, like, the last post…). Let’s correct that with a nifty paper I found on octopus suckers.
Here’s a typical view of a tangle of octopus arms, all covered with circular suckers. The octopus can cling to things, grasp prey and other objects with those nifty little discs, and just generally populate people’s nightmares with the idea of all those grappling, clutching, leech-like appendages.
