We laugh at the idea of you burning in hell and we hope you get hit by a church van tonight!!”

… Richard Dawkins reads some of his hate mail while relaxing at the hearth.
Continue reading “Richard Dawkins, your theory sucks! →

From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity’s most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach — calculation by hand — isn’t just tedious, it’s mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his radical idea: teaching kids math through computer programming.
Continue reading Teaching kids real math with computers →

The distinguished evolutionary biologist Morris Goodman died on November 14, 2010, at the age of 85, according to the Wayne State University School of Medicine. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 12, 1925, Goodman attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before enlisting in the United States Air Force in 1943. Returning to Wisconsin, he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in zoology. After a series of postdoctoral appointments, in 1958 he took a position at Wayne State University, where he remained for fifty-two years. In the late 1950s, he became interested in evolution, and swiftly became a pioneer in molecular systematics, especially as applied to primates. Describing a 1975 paper using hemoglobin sequence data, he commented, “I think we were the first to get hard evidence of Darwinian evolution.” His honors included election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and the Charles R. Darwin Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Goodman’s scientific prominence, as well as his controversial proposal that chimpanzees and bonobos be reclassified from the genus Pan to the genus Homo, resulted in his frequently serving as a target of creationists.

More here

Paul was a real live scientific meteorologist who accidentally ended up a TV weatherman. (The regular one was sick, the substitute was sick, so they threw him in front of the camera.) He then became so popular that they fired him during a budget crunch. He was one of the first weather reporters anywhere, and certainly the first in Minnesota, to tell people that AGW is real.

Don’t worry he didn’t die or anything. (Don Shelby is retiring thus this conversation):

Let’s have a look and see if we can decide.
Continue reading An excellent example of either crappy science reporting or crappy science … →

Denis Dutton is a philosophy professor and the editor of Arts & Letters Daily. In his book The Art Instinct, he suggests that humans are hard-wired to seek beauty.
Continue reading A Darwinian theory of beauty →

Cats:

Dogs:

It has been with us all along. In movies, on TV, documentaries. We wuz lookin’ ’em right in the face and never done nowd it.
Continue reading Inside the real tea party movement →

In a recent blog post, Krazy Kristian Guy Ray Comfort (the “Banana man”) notes that atheists are planning a billboard campaign that will point out the barbaric nature of passages from the Christian and Muslim texts. He goes on to note that anyone who offends Islam is likely to get their heads cut off, and he tastelessly uses a photograph of a living, smiling Daniel Pearl (who was beheaded by his terrorist captives in 2002) to make his point.

Comfort goes on to say that Atheists may be captured by people of Islamic faith and beheaded, and that would be bad for the Atheists. Therefore, he pleads, the Atheists should only mock Christians, because Christians “genuinely love (Atheists) and … can take it with grace.”

Comfort is of course out of line making these claims, and more importantly, making fun of these activities. Using terrorist activities as the basis of a joke is obnoxious and hurtful to their victims, and making absurd and senseless, offensive claims about what organized Atheists will do with their first amendment rights is offensive. Claiming that he and all others of his ilk love Atheists is either a cynical and hypocritical lie or an unnecessary over the top joke.

All of which, however, pales in relationship to the racist comment he hid clumsily within his blog, which, if his own description of people of the Islamic faith is half correct, will lead to his, Ray Comfort’s, horrible death through beheading or possibly stoning.

Comfort uses the spelling “Moslem” instead of Muslim.

In Arabic, Muslim means “one who give himself to God.” In Arabic, Moslem means “one who is evil and unjust.” For this reason, the Society of Editors recommends using “Muslim” instead of “Moslem.” Muslims will want to engage in a fatwa against Ray Comfort, assuming his own logic is correct. He is doomed.

I wonder if they film it. The beheading. And what will they do with his head? Maybe it can go here. Or, better yet, here!

Yesterday in Minnesota, 546 vehicles drove off the road and 461 vehicles crashed into something (often, another vehicle) due to storm conditions. In one of those incidents, a person died. In neighboring Wisconsin, there were over 400 crashes and two dead.
Continue reading Death vs. Taxes During a Storm →

It is funny to see this headline on our local news (CBS) web site:

Then I look outside the window and see accumulations nearing a half foot of snow, then I look at the weather maps and realize that the local CBS affiliate is probably buried, so no one could update the story about how it might not snow and stuff.

Speaking of WCCO, the local CBS affiliate, yesterday Tim Pawlenty, our lame Governor (insert the word “duck” in there if you want, though I’m not sure why you would), did his last weekly radio address. I never did listen to one of those, but the news faithfully reported the stupid-ass things he said every week.

Last night an 11 year old girl was shot in the neck about four blocks from my old house in South and two blocks from the where Taiesha Edwards was killed by a stray bullet a few years back while sitting at a table in her home doing her homework. This time, the girl was on her front porch, and she will be OK. No arrests, no suspects, but we do know a gun was involved. And yes, there are people in this world who think, every time an innocent grade schooler is shot or killed, how nice it would be to produce and distribute MORE guns (those are the gun nuts) there are those of us who think the opposite.

But no one was on the local television news this morning being indignant about this. It was reported,causally, as though it was normal, and the news casters moved on.

Regarding another story, however, the news casters and the police being interviewed were apoplectic. Police were indignant, some were crying, vengeance was clearly on their minds, because someone stabbed their doggie during a police operation.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for the dog (which was injured but not killed), but not only should the 11 year old girl who was shot while standing on her porch get more press than the dog that was stabbed in the line of duty, but her story should be in the list of headlines, above the story about the police dog that was stabbed. Instead, the police dog that was stabbed was in the CBS/WCCO featured headline section, and the story about the girl (and these events occurred about the same time) not in the headlines, placed well down the web page below the story about the hockey team losing (which is not news) and the basketball team winning (which I admit, is astonishing and unlikely news, probably a reporting error).

Possible human remains were found in a park Amanda and Julia sometimes bike in over across the river (oh, that’s where Julia snowboards). Probably a dog.

Speaking of dogs, how about a reality check: An Akita in Burnsville took out two kids (3 and 5 years old) yesterday (both will be OK) and according to the news:

The dogs’ owner, Chuck Svare, only knows Koda and Pepper as good companions and has had them for years.

“He should have never bitten a little girl. That’s my opinion, but she had to, something was done to provoke it,” said Svare.

Never listen to the shit that comes out of people’s mouths, One of the two dogs involved in the attack attacked a neighbor’s dog a while back, and neither dog is up to date on vaccines.

Am I down on dogs today? No, not really. In fact, I’m going to be nice to dogs all day because we are expecting a foot of snow here, and I may need to be rescued by one.

Over eleven thousand Haitians have been infected with cholera, and over 700 have died. The epidemic is worsening very quickly. Over 80 of the dead have died within the last 24 hours as of this writing. The resources needed to deal with this are not available, apparently because cholera in Haiti is not as interesting or sympathy garnering as an earthquake in Haiti.

Continue reading Haiti Cholera Toll: Stricken – 11,000, Dead – 750+ →

… OK, exhale …

Continue reading “That George Bush … He’s a great leader.” →