Don McLeroy is the creationist formerly on the Texas School board who tried very hard to ruin science education both in Texas and across the United States. He is an ill informed, paranoid, mean spirited dick head. He thinks humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. I repeat. He was on the Texas School Board. He also hates atheists. He doesn’t have the qualification to breath the same air the rest of us do.

Colbert has an interesting conversation with him. Below the fold because it is a little wide.
Continue reading Don McLeroy on The Colbert Report →

Yes, it was a crime; it was a crime against nature and against the law of the land, and now the first criminal charges are being filed, according to an exclusive report at NPR.

“The first criminal charges in connection with the BP oil spill have been filed against a former BP engineer named Kurt Mix,” NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports exclusively.

Carrie just told our Newscast unit that Mix has been charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting text messages after the spill. The texts were related to the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf. Mix will make his first appearence in court today.

Go read about it here.

Update from the Washington Post:

Justice Dept. makes 1st arrest in BP oil spill; ex-engineer accused of obstruction of justice

… Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, was arrested on two counts of obstruction of justice.

The Justice Department says the 50-year-old Mix is accused of deleting a string of 200 text messages with a BP supervisor in October 2010 that involved internal BP information about how efforts to cap the well were failing.

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…. or do they?

Holy crap!!!!

Hat tip: Charlotte

This is the second of two surveys designed to assess Relative Importance of various things in your profession. This survey is for anyone who works in IT, regardless if they are in higher ed, industry, government, etc. The more folks who respond to the survey, the better the results will be! The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete.

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Keynote talk by multimedia artist Lynn Fellman for Minneapolis DNA Days

Do you know why some people are 1 to 4% Neandertal? Lynn Fellman explains how your Uncle Ned and maybe you have an “Inner Neander” during her art and science talk on April 28th. The presentation is one of many talks at Twin City libraries to celebrate National DNA Days.

“Your Inner Neandertal” is a 30 minute presentation showing how art can uniquely express science concepts and why some of us may find a little “Neander” in our genes. With examples from “At the Crossroads” video and DNA Portrait traveling show, Fellman explains how some genes may be a surprising and generous gift from our ancient and now extinct cousins.

Saturday, April 28th at 11 am
Minneapolis Downtown Hennepin Library
This keynote talk for Minneapolis DNA Days is free and open to the public. Please register (go here).
For more information, parking and directions (go here).

More DNA Days events at area libraries will cover topics like genetic testing and screening, capturing family health history and tools for collecting the information.

Illuminating Human Gene Stories through art, design and narrative
Lynn Fellman multimedia artist FellmanStudio.com

You know about the Minneapolis Spoon if for no other reason than you read Biodork who uses it as a symbol in her blog’s motif. Last night someone gratified the spoon with the word Kony:

And now, the Kitty Kats …

(Sorry, I was going to put the second video in this blog post but something about the first video made embedding any second video impossible. Thank you for the upgrade WordPress and WCCO!)

A special thanks to BP on this fine Earth Day. Modifications made to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico have had several important improvements. Much of the pesky coral living at the bottom of the gulf seems to have been doused with deadly doses of BP oil, some species have been provided with hip new color schemes (mainly black and blackish), some shrimp are now eyeless, which will surely make them easier to catch and, according to BP, does not affect their edibility, the killifish are being killed, which is presumably what they want (given their name and all) and those snippy crabs that we all love to make into crabcakes and such are now frequently claw-less, and thus less likely to pinch us!

Here’s a short video clip outlining the many improvements to the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem that BP has given us: