Got science?

No one boasts of ignorance of literature or almost anything else except science. Now it is almost fashionable to strut not only ignorance of science but to boast that alternative ways of knowing and other realms of knowledge exist and are superior. That is all hog wash dreamed up to avoid responsibility for one's own personal ignorance and for allowing it to prosper in our culture.

Scientists may be biased, but science itself, for all its flaws, is still the best system ever devised for grasping how the world works... more»

I'm a fast learner.

One day early last week I got a little hungry one afternoon. I grabbed a jar of olives out of the ice box and sat down with a handful of Cheez-Its and flipped on the TV just in time to see NBC evening news coming on. Now, just like one of Pavlov's puppies, every day that I've had the TV on this week when NBC news comes on and I hear Brian Williams voice, I think of olives and Cheez-Its.

Check out the eye.

I don't get it on my TV but for the rest of the world, tonight at 9 central on the History Channel's Evolve, check out the eye.

Remember how ethanol was supposed to save us?

Planned ethanol refineries are being shelved all over the Midwest because they don't make money even being highly subsidized and this: Read all about it>>

Texas Education System = Dark Ages

By instituting the teachings of radical Christian evangelical fundametalism in Texas schools, evangelical and disturbingly backward Don McLeroy is determined to push Texas education back to the dark ages and to destroy the future for millions of Texas students not to mention Texas' chances of attracting jobs for future generations. This guy and his cronies on the Texas Education Board should be thrown out. What he and they are proposing to do to Texas children is despicable state sponsored child abuse. They well know that a good education is the enemy of their religious radicalism and they are attacking it in this state. Texas taxpayers are headed into massive law suites in the next few years if we do not stop their attack on education now. No, it's not someone elses problem, it is something each of us must do. We must not let the McLeroy horror stand. Unless you think you'll enjoy having a state full of workers who are full of superstitions and dumb as snot, join the Texas Freedom Network or not, today but get active in this fight!

Sadly, Randy Pausch has died.

The good news is that his 47 short years and his last lecture were inspiration to thousands. Would that we all could get a chance to practice some of that kind of living. Getting to help a few would be good enough. We should all look for the Randy Pausch in everyone we meet and remember that we all benefit from them even when they give their gifts behind the scenes. That's how the world gets better.

Is 3,747 calories a day enough for ya"

....the average American consumes an estimated 3,747 calories a day, a staggering 1200-1500 calories over recommendations

Instead of drill now, drill here, pay less; drive down the cost of gas by eating like we have a brain.

Desecration Done Right!

There's been a dust-up from some religious whackos over a cracker revealing the evil at the heart of all religions. The cracker is dead.

What will they think of next?

When I'm having an out-of-apartment experience like visiting fam or friends and such, sometimes I get the urge to check for email or do the other Internet things. Sometimes I just might need to do some other computer stuff with apps that maybe my hosts computer don't have installed. Google Docs takes care of most stuff. Anyway, the idea got me playing around with portable Firefox and it is very cool. Running it from a USB stick makes it a little slow but that's not a big deal to me. I like having the history and such from those sessions, with me when I get home. It doesn't leave a mess on my hosts computers. I can even blog and stuff from the portable browser like I'm doing right now to test the FF 3.0.1 version upgrade I just installed. Now I'm going to sniff some of the other portable apps. Hmmmm, maybe KeePass will help me get rid of that huge list of password stuff I have to keep up with. Then there is TrueCrypt to encrypt and password protect the whole schtick in case I lose it or something. And it's all free like I wish food, water, shampoo, shelter, carz, gas, electricity, doctors and a way to keep the stick syhcronized with an online encryted version of itself that I could zap onto a new drive from any computer in case I lose this one.

Strange

The internets went black from here about 4 o'clock central. I use OpenDNS on my 'chines. So I tried the IP address of their system status page. Slowly it came up and showed their system was up and okay. I switched to automatically get any DNS available and got connected .. kinda. AIM and Yahoo messengers would not connect and no Gmail. A tracert to OpenDNS's numbers showed everthing stopping at some strange (.....ntt.....) probably a router. Sent message to OpenDNS. Got some suggestions back to tracert to some other numbers etc. but everything went back to normal about that time. I'm guessing something got rebooted. All is well.

Footprints

Creationist hate 'em

Footprints...especially human ones, which creationist "investigators" keep discovering in the same strata as dinosaur bones or footprints, and paleontologists keep demonstrating are nothing of the sort. It's been my experience that creationist authorities (oxymoron) usually end up admitting that they weren't really human prints after all. But they are somewhat lax in passing that information on to their flocks of True Believers, with the result that your average grassroots creationist is under the impression that the fossil record is replete with human footprints, clear back to the beginning (suggested by Floyd Waddle). (To my knowledge, there are NO "manprints" in mesozoic strata that are claimed as such by the main creationist organizations. It's only a few fringe crackpots that continue to make those claims, and embarrass the "mainstream" creationists, who have to eventually denounce them. Your pot has to be SERIOUSLY cracked to get even your fellow creationists to admit you're over the top.) Much more>>

A Great Metaphor!

The Republican National Convention will be held in the Excel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota this year. That's symbolic enough but wait for it.... That's right across the street from the Science Museum of Minnesota. Contrast... but wait. The Science Museum of Minnesota is being closed to the public for the duration of the convention. Metaphor complete.

Where are we?

I was reading a news story this morning about some guy beating a speeding ticket because it turned out that the GPS tracking thing in his car showed he was going the speed limit instead of 17 mph faster like the cop's radar claimed. That reminded me of something I've been wanting for a long time. A way to know where I am and what or who is near by. There are lots of variations on the idea already available but not quite available to me. There are GPS systems for cars, planes and boats. I've used lots of nav systems over the years from RF direction finders to VORTAC to Loran to Inertial Nav to VLF to GPS and systems that were used integrations of sensors from several of those technologies. The idea I like best for everday purposes would be a cell phone type technology that could use GPS, cell phone tower locations and built in accelarometry to locate the cell phone on a built in map database that could be customized by connecting to networks and grabbing info like new map layers, updates for the map info and locations of other stuff. I would like to make my location and condition available to "freinds" at all times. I'm kind of a dog type personallity as apposed to a cat type personallity, where cats kind of sneak around about stuff they do, a dog doesn't care who's looking, if a dog can do it everyone can watch and is just as happy if you don't like it as it is if you do. I wish I knew where other people were so we could connect easier when we are close by or when we are doing something the other would like to hook up for etc. etc..... Of course I want it to all be free, open source and I want to do the internets and my email from the same gizmo. But I want a big screen and full size keyboard, lights, camera, action that all folds down to pocket size. I guess that will all have to wait for some new technology. Pocket Holideck that just creates all that in thin air when you need it, anyone?

Road Trip

Two of my cousins lost their mom last week. The generation in our family that I belong to has been very fortunate to have had long lived parents, aunts and uncles. They afforded us a view of the places and times they lived first hand and in living color. Ours like most families is made of very different personalities and experiences that gives each generation and every individual connected to us a rich set of histories to draw on when we need it. Our "bunch" has a lot of "independent" souls and more than a few mavericks. But, we have a strong sense of family ties on both sides of every branch of the family bush. We came together Wednesday to honor aunt Audie by sharing our memories of her and those ties among the people she loved. My sisters and I made a road trip out of it by visiting towns and home sites where most of our grandparents, parents aunts uncles and cousins grew up. We took pictures recorded oral histories and visited museums and did some shopping. All of which our kids will have to sort through some day. We all came together for Audie's service. Her memory was strong there. The service reflected her personality by the way we seemed to act as if she was there and in on every conversation. Good job aunt Audie! We left the service and drifted on over to Rodger's place to visit and mix and carry on like we always do. On the way, we checked the cemetery for the rest of the kin laid there. It looks like they're still right where we put 'em. A bunch of that got recorded too. More hours and hours of family evidence for future generations to deal with. The technologies today will make it virtually impossible for our kids and future generations to deny where they came from. Ha! Now I return you to your regularly scheduled programming in progress.

Crumbs

I couldn't resist. I grabbed some crunchy chocolate chip cookies while I was hunting and gathering groceries the other day. They are in one of those packages that has a little plastic thing inside that keeps them all in little rows and the outer bag has a tab on it that, when you pull it, opens the the whole side of the pack and has some sticky on it so that it's easy to re-seal the pack to keep the crunchy in over the week or so it takes me to eat 'em. I gave that tab a yank and looked in and all the cookies are in their respective little compartments all CRUSHED to bits. Not one whole cookie in the bunch. Few are even bite size. The plastic thing isn't even dented. They must have delivered them to the store via one of those Soyuz re-entry capsules with the defective parachute. It wouldn't be too bad if I had some ice cream to pile them on. But I am not going all the way back over there and through the maze just for ice cream. I'll just pour them in a bowl and eat them with a spoon. It is probably a marketing gimmick to make people buy ice cream every time they buy these cookies just in case the cookies are crushed when they get home and open them up. That is all. As you were.

Move Over Noam Chomsky

When Prospect and Foreign Policy drew up our list of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals a few weeks ago, none of us expected a Turkish Sufi cleric, barely known in the west, to sweep to victory. Nor did we expect every name in the top ten would be from a Muslim background. (Noam Chomsky, who won the last poll in 2005, led the west in 11th place this time.) More>>

Beyond Belief '06 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Religious Terror

Christianity is as bonkers as any middle eastern sect. I can't add anything to this; It is a goddamned cracker. If you are not against religion, you are part of the problem. There is no probability of God or any other supernatural spirit realm. Reject the delusion of religion that hijacks every conversation and every way of connecting with your fellow human beings and get on with life.

My Sweeet '96

Woo Hoo! It passed state emissions and safety check this morning for the twelfth year in a row! Nice pickup. Maybe I'll buy you something nice or get you an Obama sticker.

Before National Geographic

Just wow! Paleolithic cave art shows no sun, moon, or plant life, and hardly a human being. It is rather about magnificent animals... more»

Kathy Richie died last night.

About eight years ago I stopped at J's for breakfast for the first time. The first person I met there that day was Kathy Richie one of those people who have just that kind of poise and friendliness that makes everything look pretty good. We hit it off that morning and she would always say howdy even if I wasn't at her tables. Kathy battled with cancer almost the entire time I knew her. She came back time after time and clawed her happy way out of the fatigue and pain to go back to work. I spoke to her last Saturday and she laughed. She worked yesterday but I had a biscuit here because I had a thing or two to do. J's was somber this morning. They said she left last night. Kathy made life sweet.

U.S. President Shreds Bible

Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, 'I only believe these parts? One did just that>>>

Happy Birthday USA!

Thomas Paine was the first to name this country The United States of America.

Ethics; You know them when you feel them.

We are born wired with rules of ethics. We know them when we feel them. But, to make them more useful it is better to have the rules articulated in a clearly written set. Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code to Guide Decisions in Work and Life by Ronald A. Howard and Clinton D. Korver helps to do that and much more. It helps us to recognize and deal very effectively with the common dilemmas we face everyday. It is a only about 225 pages but it is one of the most clear-headed treatments on the subject I've ever read. It is chock full of real world situation and lucid examples of the tools we all need in order to recognize the importance of ethics at home and at work and to develop those tools and rules in ways that clarify them and take them out of the realm of mysticism and place them squarely into our everyday real lives in real unambiguous language and practices. Try it, you'll like it! Here's a better review.>>

Happy Birthday Evolution

150 years ago Darwin and Wallace published the greatest idea ever had by a human brain!