Tennessee “monkey bill” passes legislature

House Bill 368 passed the Tennessee House of Representatives on a 72-23 vote on March 26, 2012, the Chattanooga Times Free Press (March 26, 2012) reports. The bill would encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of topics that arouse “debate and disputation” such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning”; it now proceeds to Governor Bill Haslam, who will have ten days to sign the bill, allow it to become law without his signature, or veto it. Haslam previously indicated that he would discuss the bill with the state board of education, telling the Nashville Tennesseean (March 19, 2012), “It is a fair question what the General Assembly’s role is … That’s why we have a state board of education.”

Opposing the bill have been the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, and three distinguished Tennessee scientists and members of the National Academy of Sciences who recently warned, in a column published in the Tennessean (March 25, 2012), that the legislation was “misleading, unnecessary, likely to provoke unnecessary and divisive legal proceedings, and likely to have adverse economic consequences for the state.”

Click Here to explore freeDOS’s new site design, now in testing stage. I think it looks much much better than the old site and is noticeably more functional. It is actually a good model for other similar software supporting sites. The thing I like about it most is that you need to do very little work to find out what the heck the software is, if, why, and how one might install it, and what you can use it for . I would add a single sentence or two to the context material, but otherwise it looks nearly done.

While you are there, visit the bottom of the page to find links to the freeDOS facebook page and twitter feed.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about here at all, that’s OK. Just move along. Nothing for you to see here. But just remember. The world wasn’t always the way it was when you found it.

Run!

Interesting. I don’t know what I think of the US thing. How’s that working out with Torchwood? (I’m a year behind on everything because I only see these things on Netflix.)

I consider these two things to be related, and good:

Rush Limbaugh Advertiser Exodus Continues With Kohler Pulling Content

Rush Limbaugh’s advertising woes continue, as kitchen and bath fixtures company Kohler is the latest company to pull its content from the radio program.

On Monday, Kohler responded to pressure from customers who wanted to know if the company advertised on Limbaugh’s program. Kohler tweeted that the company does not support Limbaugh’s comments and pulled its advertisements from his show.

and

Starbucks Boycott Over Marriage Equality Spurs Tenfold Backlash

The National Organization for Marriage’s decision to boycott Starbucks for the company’s support of the freedom to marry has turned out to be a dismal failure. In the five days since NOM launched its “Dump Starbucks” petition, it has only gotten 19,000 signatures, compared to the nearly 250,000 individuals who have signed SumOfUs’s retaliatory “Thank You, Starbucks” card. In fact, SumOfUs has gotten over 8,000 new signers since 8:30 this morning.

Bwahahahaha

I have participated in Minnesota Democratic Party (officially known as the DFL1) activities in the past, but never as intimately as this year. In doing so, I’ve observed a number of very interesting things about how a political campaign works, and I’d like to share those observations with you. In particular, I’ll contrast the campaign I’m volunteering for whenever I have a chance (Sharon Sund for US Congress) with the opposing campaign (Brian Barnes for US Congress).

Read More

I was recently at a political debate in which one of the debaters, Brian Barnes, said he did not like the term “Obamacare,” lamented that the Republicans are better at coming up with catch phrases than we Democrats are, and suggested that instead of “Obamacare” we call it “The Affordable Healthcare Act.” The person debating against him, Sharon Sund, didn’t really agree or disagree.

As a side note I’ll mention that one of the reasons we have this health care is because of the tireless activism of lots of people including Sharon. Thanks Sharon.

Anyway, I always liked “Obamacare” as a term … I wanted to take that term right from the hands of the Republicans from the beginning. In fact, I made Obamacare Baby Suits and Adult Tee-Shirts, though nobody bought any from me. (Click here to rectify this situation).

And today, I got an email from Barack and Joe: They want to take back the term Obamcare and use it to refer to the Affordable Health Care Act.

Most people eventually catch up to my blog … took two years this time, though, that’s kinda long.

Careful; it cause large red question marks to pop out of your head.

Read this for context.

Finally, someone has rhymed Praxis with Taxes.

John Childs is the very first person to fly in America. He did it in 1757, on September 13th, from the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston. This is the same church from which Sarah Palin hung some lanterns to direct Michel Bachmann on her ride to Concord New Hampshire to warn the British that we were “Not going to take it any more.”

Childs tied himself to a glider made of bird feathers, and he did it a three times in a row, firing off guns the third time, but he caused such a distraction that he got banned from doing it again. Based on the description of the event, Childs was really ziplining more than flying, but that’s cool too. Ziplining was invented in Boston in 1757!

And all of that was a LOT more interesting than the more recent bird-like flight, in which a guy in the Neatherlands made wings, and flew by flapping them around like a bird.

Or did he ….

The man who claimed to achieve bird-like flight with a custom-built contraption came clean today: It was a hoax 8 months in the making.

Netherlands artist Floris Kaayk, who went by the name of Jarno Smeets during his “Human Birdwings” project, admitted to the hoax today on a Dutch television program called “De Wereld Draait Door” (“The World is Turning”).

“My name is Floris Kaayk I’m actually a filmmaker and animator. I am now 8 months working on an experiment about online media,” Kaayk told the show, according to a Dutch-to-English translation in a YouTube video.

The YouTube Video originally put up by Kaayk was since taken down by Kaayk.

What a loser. Childs would not have taken down his YouTube video.

Skeptically Speaking 156:

This week, we’re experiencing the power of stories to communicate science. Join us for Beyond 42: How Science Can Use Stories to Explain Life, the Universe and Everything. This event, recorded live in Edmonton, features Scientific American Blog Editor Bora Zivkovic, and a fantastic cast of scientists telling moving stories that communicate the wonder of science and discovery.

There is no live show this week. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, March 23.

Details here.

On Atheists Talk Sunday, March 25, 9:00am-10:00am
AM 950 KTNF in the Twin Cities
Stream live at http://www.am950ktnf.com.