Your cat can be a knickknack.

I have nothing to say, just have a look.

https://twitter.com/#!/billmaher/status/177186344697733120

Hat tip, Jason.

He will have to apologize for this or we’re going after his sponsors.

From the NCSE:

John Freshwater’s legal challenge to the decision to terminate his employment as a middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, was defeated again, on March 5, 2012, when Ohio’s Fifth District Court of Appeals upheld (PDF) a lower court’s rejection of his challenge. It is still open to Freshwater to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Ohio, however, so the case — which ultimately stems from a complaint against Freshwater lodged in 2008 — may continue to linger in the Ohio court system.

In 2008, a local family accused Freshwater of engaging in inappropriate religious activity — including teaching creationism — and sued Freshwater and the district. The Mount Vernon City School Board then voted to begin proceedings to terminate his employment. After thorough administrative hearings that proceeded over two years and involved more than eighty witnesses, the referee presiding over the hearings issued his recommendation that the board terminate Freshwater’s employment with the district, and the board voted to do so in January 2011.

Freshwater challenged his termination in the Knox County Court of Common Pleas in February 2011, but the court found “there is clear and convincing evidence to support the Board of Education’s termination of Freshwater’s contract(s) for good and just cause.” Freshwater then appealed the decision to Ohio’s Fifth District Court of Appeals in December 2011. NCSE filed a friend-of-the-court brief (PDF) with the appellate court, arguing that Freshwater’s materials and methods concerning evolution “have no basis in science and serve no pedagogical purpose.”

Documents relevant to Freshwater’s termination and the subsequent court case are available on NCSE’s website. Extensive blog coverage of the Freshwater saga, including Richard B. Hoppe’s day-by-day account of Freshwater’s termination hearing, is available at The Panda’s Thumb blog; search for “Freshwater”. Hoppe also recently contributed “Dover Comes to Ohio” (PDF) — a detailed account from a local observer of the whole fracas, from the precipitating incident to Freshwater’s appeal — to Reports of the National Center for Science Education 32:1.

Source and links here

The Carnival of Evolution is HERE at Splendour Awaits.

Go look at it, click on the entries, and tweet and facebook and G+ them. Unless you are some kind of damn creationist or something.

You’ve never seen a web carnival like this one before, I guarantee. Just go look.

No, not THAT kind of Darwin Award. The other one .. the “Friend of Darwin” award:

Master Educator, Young Activist, Honored By NCSE

It’s an age-old story–the master and the newcomer. The expert who has devoted decades to keeping students on the right path. And the new kid who throws himself into the battle for truth, beauty, and the sheer joy of challenging the status quo.

The master–and a winner of NCSE’s 2012 Friend of Darwin award–is Judy Scotchmoor, Assistant Director for Education and Public Programs at the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP). Scotchmoor is a legend among scientists, educators, and museum staff, having built UCMP’s highly regarded evolution program from scratch over the last 18 years. Her work includes the wildly popular “Understanding Evolution” and “Understanding Science” web sites, which clock over a million visitors per month. Scotchmoor was also the motive force behind the 2000 National Conference on the Teaching of Evolution, which galvanized scientists and educators to take the growing attacks on evolution education seriously.

“It would be difficult to think of another person who has done more, and in such a sustained way, to promote and improve the teaching of evolution”, says NCSE executive director Eugenie Scott. “Anyone concerned about evolution education knows and respects Judy.”

The young activist making a big splash–the other winner of the 2012 Friend of Darwin award–is Louisiana’s Zack Kopplin. As part of a high school class project in 2011, Kopplin decided to organize a repeal of the creationist-backed Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). And he nearly succeeded, spearheading a statewide petition campaign that gathered 68,000 signatures. Kopplin was unstoppable, holding rallies and news conferences, appearing on dozens of local and national radio and TV shows, convincing the city of New Orleans to officially endorse his effort, getting a state senator to sponsor and introduce a repeal bill, recruiting forty-three Nobel laureates to support the repeal, and more….

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Click here to be amazed.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Also, see this release from the NCSE

How big is a medium size elephant again?

That is the new name of the proposed NASA mission to mars to Explore the Interior using Seismic Investigations.

“We chose the name InSight because we would literally peer into the interior of Mars to map out its structure,” said JPL’s Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator. “With our geophysical instruments we will be able to see right through to the center of Mars, and will be able to map out how deeply the crust extends as well as the size of the core.”

InSight is one of three missions vying to be selected for flight in the Discovery Program, a series of NASA missions to understand the solar system by exploring planets, moons, and small bodies such as comets and asteroids. All three mission teams are required to submit concept study reports to NASA on March 19.

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Not a dry eye on the house.

Send these young women into space!