As a kind of response to the recent heart-breaking polls, I present a classic article from Scientific American, 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense, which in turn presents 15 common anti-evolution arguments and then proceeds to answer and refute each one. Here’s the list of “common arguments” that are answered: Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or… Read more →
Category: Science and Technology
Grabbing viral video
Have you ever been watching a video on Google Video, or YouTube, or somewhere and wanted to snag yourself a copy of the video? Maybe you want it because you want watch it again later and don’t want to lose the URL. Maybe you want to convert it to some other video format for another use. Maybe you want to… Read more →
You Have GOT To Be Kidding Me!
Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution, Back Bible A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, “God created man exactly how Bible describes it.” Another 31% says that man did evolve, but “God guided.” Only 12% back evolution and say “God had no… Read more →
Things to listen to
Not music this time, but a bunch of things you can slap in your MP3 player and use to fill up some dead time. I’m going to assume you know what a podcast is, and have software to harvest them. (I use Doppler.) Let’s start with academics. Professor Courtney Brown, of the Political Science department at Emory University in Georgia… Read more →
Don’t bring your anti-science baloney around here…
…or we’ll shoot your ass off! OK, maybe that’s not quite what they’re saying, but the news is out that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, repository of all kinds of cool science, is protected by a bank of guns that can shoot 66 rounds a second over a radius of a mile! The guns, which the lab unveiled to much… Read more →
Tinfoil Hat Time
I see that a lot of people are getting a bit scared when looking at this. Me, I see nothing scary there (and I’m tinfoil-hat guy) except that clipboard item, and I don’t use IE, so that doesn’t apply to me. Of course, if you didn’t already know that all this information was available to servers you contact, you might… Read more →
Karma, Earl-stylee
Remember last week when Myers, over at Pharyngula, posted about the news that a Bush admin flunky was telling NASA not to refer to the Big Bang, unless they stickered it with “only a theory, ID possible”? His post included this bit: Deutsch is 24 years old, having just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism a few years ago.… Read more →
SF Authors Say Smart Things: Stross on S.O.U.
I think I’m at the point now where my digust and hatred of Bush make it literally impossible for me to be objective and rational about anything. Fortunately, there are many sensible people in the world who can apparently sit on the rage and still produce cogent analyses. For example, Charlie Stross posts about the science stuff in the State… Read more →
Conspicuous Consumption
My first thought on seeing this thing in one of the hundreds of mail order catalogues that comes to my house–I buy a lot of stuff online, which apparently means that my address ends up on a lot of “hot prospect” lists or something–was “damn, that’d be pretty cool”. My second thought, upon seeing the price of the thing ($17K… Read more →
Scientists Say Smart Things, Too
I’ve referred to Professor Paul Myers, and his blog Pharyngula on more than one occasion here, and I’ve probably lifted uncredited links from him a few more times (“bad blogger, no Google juice for you”). I definitely read his stuff among the first things every day. Well, he’s the subject of the Science Friday interview today at Daily Kos. I… Read more →
Computer still dead…
So, Dell’s “Gold Enterprise Support” isn’t quite living up to it’s “service on site in 6 hours” contract. Apparently they lost my new motherboard in transit and had to dispatch a new one, or something. I am now hoping to have the machine working again by Thursday. I am experiencing some withdrawl symptoms, but fortunately I have access at least… Read more →
Computer Dead…
My main working computer apparently died in the night. Well, actually let’s just say that it’s really sick, instead of dead, since I’m hoping to be able to save it with a motherboard transplant. This means I’m cut off from a lot of my tools & data, which could mean a shortage of posts until it is fixed (hopefully Tuesday),… Read more →
Who said higher math wouldn’t help you in real life?
Oh man, I am so putting this on a T-shirt. This equation is the result of research at Manchester University into the “beer goggles” effect on perception of attractiveness. Here’s the key to formula: An = number of units of alcohol consumed S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky) L =… Read more →
Still looking at pictures
This was my first ever attempt at “Photoshopping”. Not a bad job for a first try, and it still makes me laugh. This file has to be ten years old, at least. The body is a high school friend, who is now apparently a PhD. The head, of course, is Sean Miller, a.k.a. “Freakboy:, who has been my coworker now… Read more →
I love living in the era of Photoshop
When I was a kid I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and I loved seeing pictures of some of the wild and outlandish scenery and residents of those stories. Everything from Alan Lee’s illustrations of Tolkein to Barlowe’s pictures of aliens. Living now in the age of Photoshop, it’s a rare week when there isn’t some web… Read more →
