In the past, we’ve covered how to live trap a mouse. And, how to live trap a squirrel. For those, I’ve got considerable experience and was able to give you good advice. But for live trapping a Godzilla, it is best to seek professional advice.

Scicurious has the seminal blog post:

… This was a bunch of surgeons based out of Temple University in Philadelphia, examining gunshot wounds to the scrotum. It seems like this would be kind of a rare event, but in fact, over a 20 year period they had 97 total wounds, with an average of about 5 per year! That’s a lot of gunshots to the scrotum. I suppose that ANY gunshot wound to the scrotum might be considered “a lot”. …

But then, they came up with this, which simply CAN NOT BE TRUE:

Continue reading I used to think National Geographic was a reputable institution →

Over at Culture of Science: Sketchy Thinking About Global Warming (Part I)

It is said that this happened:

“When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big. The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. “Those are air bubbles,” he snapped. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.”

You may not know Dennis Ritichie but you are using his work right now. He was instrumental in developing Unix (which is ultimately related to developing Linux, which you are using right now because this web site is delivered via a Linux server) but he’s more well known, probably, for his work developing the C language.

Every time an old computer language is mentioned for some historical reason, we learn that even thought we thought the language was dead, or obscure, or irrelevant, it turns out to be used in some wide range of functions and life itself would be impossible as we know it without it. I think with C it is the opposite. If you know anything about anything, you know that C or some variant of C is basic to everything. C is arguably one of the hardest languages to program in, but it is also the language that most stuff that needs to be efficient gets programmed in. It will probably turn out that it is not used anywhere for anything. (But I doubt that.)

(Code Trolls will tell you in the comments below the many ways in which what I just said is unconscionably wrong. I’m sure they’re right. I’m sure they’ll be polite, though.)

If you learned C you probably read K&R. R is Ritchie.

Ahahahahhhaaaaa … snort … OMG … as it were….

do NOT click through if you are DRINKING COFFEE OR HOLDING A BABY OR WHATEVER!!!!

Continue reading I am ROFLOLing so bad I can barely operate the computer to post this video →

A spammer using a domain provided free by GoDaddy, which sends people to a domain hosting service (which in turn advertises GoDaddy) has been putting spam on this site at a very high rate over the last few hours (many have gotten through).

Does this mean that GoDaddy, the internet service provider, is spamming mysite, or merely that GoDaddy is funding the spamming of my site? Do you use GoDaddy? If you do, then YOU are spamming my site, then, aren’t you?

All of you stop it.

I’ve shown you this before but I thought you might like to see it again.

Click Here to Buy your Sea Level Rise due to Global Warming Mug!

Hat tip Sheril, where you will find more important details.

FTB.com bloggers Ed Brayton, Greta Christina, and PZ Myers will be there. Will you?

Continue reading Free Inquiry Group 20th Anniversary Celebration →

By Bob Reich.
Continue reading The Seven Biggest Economic Lies →

It is bad enough that major fundraising organizations often use too large a percentage of what they raise for what they claim to do (sometimes, I think, hiding that value behind local fundraising costs as seems to be the case with American Cancer Society run for life events). But, when atheistic tried to give something close to $500,000 do one such organization, they tried very very hard to not accept it. It was never stated overtly by the American Cancer society that they did not want money provided by atheists, but the atheists tried pretty hard to give it and the ACS managed to avoid it. Greta Christina has the story here.

Skeptics and atheists and freethinking folk are supposed to be smart, and they are supposed to be inquiring and, well, skeptical and freethinking and stuff. But they very very often are not. Between skeptics being politically conservative (mainly with respect to social issues) and often not as inquiring and smart as they are fond of telling the rest of us they are, I am sufficiently annoyed by the movement(s) as a whole to reserve calling myself, for instance, a skeptic. If anything, I’m a skeptical skeptic. A godless freethinking skeptical meta-skeptic. That’s me.
Continue reading How to not cure cancer →