Monthly Archives: November 2009
A very interesting Skeptically Speaking this Friday
Paul Ingraham is Vancouver Registered Massage Therapist and science writer who criticizes questionable practices in alternative health care — and his professional regulator calls it offensively unprofessional and wants to censor his website with tens of thousands of dollars in legal defense expenses at stake.
Science-based alternative health? Rebellion within the alt-health ranks? Juicy.
This is why you should not bring your children or pets to Home Depot
The following video is NOT from a Home Depot. It is, however, from a Vodka warehouse. But this could happen anywhere with fork lifts. Well, OK, more likely when fork lifts and Vodka are mixed. Which just proves ….
Continue reading This is why you should not bring your children or pets to Home Depot
The Corporation Part 10
What is this a picture of?
If you said “cat” you’d be partly right. If you said “naked lady kneeling on floor” you’d be closer.
Continue reading What is this a picture of?
How many people does it take to make a baby really sick?
We have an interesting conundrum. Our offspring (______) is due on November 20th. This places the likely date of birth just prior to Thanksgiving. This causes many people to get very excited because they get to see and play with the new baby. I wonder how mad at me all those people are going to get when they find out I might not let that happen?
Continue reading How many people does it take to make a baby really sick?
Messing Up Darwin’s Origin
Please do me a favor. Start collecting those bogus-ized copies of Darwin’s Origin being distributed by Ray Comfort. We’re low on firewood up at the cabin. Oh, and if you see Ray, puke on his shoes for me, OK?
It’s not that I like burning books. But this is not burning books. When Ray Comfort distributes a faked-up copy of The Origin, he’s committing a kind of intellectual violence. Tossing the books into the wood stove is a parry.
If you want to reduce the effects of global warming, you could always bury them in your garden thus sequestering the carbon they are made from.
Here are the details from the National Center for Science Education:
Continue reading Messing Up Darwin’s Origin
First Video of Marvelous Spatuletail Hummingbird’s Amazing Courtship
This is truly amazing. Of course, since this is the first such video, how do we know if this particular little guy is doing it right?
First video of the Marvelous Spatuletail Hummingbird’s amazing courtship display by Greg R. Homel, Natural Elements Productions and distributed by American Bird Conservancy, http://www.abcbirds.org. This rare humminbird inhabits the highlands of Peru.
Continue reading First Video of Marvelous Spatuletail Hummingbird’s Amazing Courtship
Mr. Deity Episode 10: Mr. Deity and the Seed
More evidence that Christians tend to be batshit insane.
Not all of them, of course. But I really am getting annoyed that the supposedly “normal” Christians are not doing a better job at taking down people like “Amber” at “Christwire” who tells us that she is “Extremely Terrified Of Chinese People … but I’m not a racist.”
The article in question is painful to read. Very very painful. Eric Michael Johnson addresses it quite nicely here. Right now I lack the patience to do what Eric has done. Please check out his overview.
The motto of this blog … Christwire.org … is “Conservative Values for an Unsaved World.”
That says it all.
The Corporation Part 9
Evolution’s Path May Lead To Shorter, Stouter Women Who Give Birth Earlier
From a Yale press release:
Yale University researchers have detected the effects of natural selection among two generations of contemporary women and predict their descendents will be slightly shorter and chubbier, have lower cholesterol and blood pressure and have their first children earlier in life.
The predictions, which were made in the Oct. 19 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on an analysis of women who have participated in the famous Framingham Heart Study, that began in 1948. The results illustrate the medical value of evolutionary biology principles, 150 years after Darwin published The Origin of the Species, the authors say.
Continue reading Evolution’s Path May Lead To Shorter, Stouter Women Who Give Birth Earlier
Michele Bachmann on Countdown
hat tip: DMB
Go Green Expo: Minneapolis
The Go Green Expo is, according to its organizers, the nation’s leading eco-focused, interactive and educational showcase. It will debut at the Minneapolis Convention Center this coming weekend, including talks, presentations, and exhibits from a variety of sources including “green businesses”. The idea is to promote energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly products and services. The Expo will include interactive seminars featuring leaders in the green industry, local politics, and community organizations.
I’m going to be officially blogging it, so if you are going send me an email, maybe we can hook up. More on this later!
The political power of bloggers
From the BBC:
Councillors in a rural town have staged a mass resignation after becoming tired of criticism from a blogger.
We could just leave it at that and know our power. Or we could look at the details more closely:
Continue reading The political power of bloggers