Yearly Archives: 2007

War on Christmas Internet Polls

Grrl Scientist took one of those crazy on line polls and discovered that she’s a holiday girl. She notes that the answers to the question “What’s your holiday personality?” seems always positive and festive and crap no matter what you answer, and notes “I mean, who wants to be told they are a holiday grinch?”

Well, if you look at the questions, its pretty obvious what is going on here. This multiple choice test makes very annoying and, in fact, rather offensive assumptions about the personality, life style, proclivity, and culture of the person taking the test. This is typical Christmas Holiday Drivel. It is why we must fight the War on Christmas.

Continue reading War on Christmas Internet Polls

Anyone Misplace a Bag? A Green Bag?

This is interesting:

30.11.2007 / 16:23 WWII army bag is found in desertLONDON. November 30. KAZINFORM. A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years.Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army.Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross’s family through a BBC website on World War II.The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mrs Ross’s sister, Irene Porter.source

This happened to me, too. Continue reading Anyone Misplace a Bag? A Green Bag?

Anthony Flew, Intelligent Design Supporter, Soft on Eugenics

John Lynch is reporting:

ID supporters seem to like Antony Flew, the one-time atheist philosopher who has apparently seen the light and become a deist. They have awarded him the Phillip Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, they have lauded his latest book, and Bill Dembski exclaims “God bless Antony Flew!” But at the risk of raining on the parade, there’s something that Bill needs to realize – the fearless Flew seems to have a very ambivalent attitude (to put it mildly) to eugenics.Prometheus Books recently published its New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, a work to which I provided an entry on Haeckel and co-wrote (with Matt Young) the entry on unbelief among scientists. While browsing my copy, I stumbled across the entry on eugenics (pp. 294 – 296, pdf), written by none other that Antony Flew….

Indeed, this gets very interesting. Go to Flew’s Eugenic Leanings

An Interesting Day in History

According to my Linux Calendar, this is the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus AND of Martin Luther King’s boycott two years later, AND the independence of both Portugal and the Central African Republic And it is even Anniversary Day in Chatham Islands (when everyone celebrates their anniversary, I suppose).Here is the full output from my Linux Calendar: Continue reading An Interesting Day in History

Extended Male Growth in Robust Australopithecus

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchIt has always been suggested, by a wide range of evidence, that australopiths in general, and robust australopiths in particular, have a higer degree of sexual dimorphism than chimps, and possibly, dimorphism in body size as high as one sees in any ape. Resent research on growth patterns, just published in Science, examines this. Continue reading Extended Male Growth in Robust Australopithecus

John West can Play the Violin But Not the Fiddle

The 1920s. It was a sad, sad time in America. All the biologists got together and, inspired by Darwinian writings, embarked on a campaign to sterilize those they perceived as unfit, the campaign known to us as Eugenics. From Eugenics grew other evils, such as Planned Parenthood, Modern Evolutionary Biology, and The Nazis. Continue reading John West can Play the Violin But Not the Fiddle