Goin' to Hell, Real Fast

I'm a bad, bad, bad man for laughing my ass off about this.

Even more so for laughing at this:



Now I really, really, really have to go to the Creation Museum.

Big Bang BOOM!!!

I know our local fireworks display won't top this action:



Happy 4th of July weekend, fellow Amerikans and all foreign-type folks everywhere!

PHASE IV! PHASE IV! We're All Gonna Die!!!

I knew it! I always knew it would be the goddamn ants that do us in. Be afraid, be very afraid...

(Phase IV scared the crap out me when I was ten years old. To a ten year old, it seemed very plausible, indeed. I even read the novelization by Barry Malzberg. You should read some Malzberg if you haven't, btw. Great writer, totally overlooked and undervalued by the majority of science fiction fans, but very cool and weird and depressing and highly literate and so twisted that even science fiction's ghetto which can embrace much has trouble with Malzberg. That makes him worth looking for, I think. I was amazed looking at his bibliography just now; I have almost everything the man's written, fiction-wise at least plus some of the non-fiction. I had no idea I liked Malzberg that much. Go figure!)

Road Trip?

Anyone wanna join me on a visit to the Creation Museum? Wanna know what it feels like to have centuries of scientific progress thrown out with the bathwater in the name of faith? Wanna feel your very soul shrink within as you witness the evidence of religious nuttery gone mainstream?

Then let's hit the road! I'm more than half serious here, kids. If we can manage four or five willing folk who have the heart to brave the maelstrom of ignorance and fear, then I think we should do it. Whether we travel alone or together, we can meet in Petersburg, KY (is that where they make the Jelly?) and immerse ourselves in the insane for a few hours, test our mettle against the power of Biblical insanity.

Space Poop!

I'm still fuming and agitated and rumbling and mad as hell over the murder of Dr. Tiller and the sick defensiveness of the right-wing media and their Xian buddies. (I don't think I will give them the respect of using the proper proper noun to describe them any more; they don't deserve it).

But, a good science story, one involving poop no less, has to make me smile. And the Xian anti-abortion movement is almost as much anti-science as it is anti-women, so I feel doubly good sharing this one with you. Plus, I'm fantasizing about dumping truckloads of guano on the doorstop of Operation Rescue.

Here 'tis, kids: Scientists have found a new way to track Emperor Penguins. Via satellite. By their poop stains! Ta-da!!!

These flightless birds, you must understand, is pretty big. And they live in colonies. So they poop a lot. In one place. And leave great big visible from outerspace stains on the Antarctic ice! Big enough and visible enough that scientists can now find both new and old nesting colonies by looking for the tell-tale brown smear. Wow.

Science is cool.

PS To Memphis - Better watch out! This is the same way they'll track you! You can run but you can't hide... your runs.

The Republican Darwin Beat Down!

Tom Tancredo tries to explain why Intelligent Design (my fingers wanted to leave my body just for typing those awful words!) is pretty much equal to the Theory of Evolution. Though they ain't. And how Darwin would have to admit that we've never found a single one of the thousands of transitional fossils he predicted we would need to prove evolution. Though we have. And humans never evolved from anything else. We was always people. Not monkeys. Though we did.

What the frack was Chris Matthews thinking having this moron on to discuss "science"?

Big Algae!

Damn, but just when I thought we might be able to break loose of the filthy bonds of one energy monopoly, along comes another! Help us, Raptor Jesus!

We're so screwed.

Yeah, Science!

I know that science is pretty scary ff you're a Republican or a Creationist, but please don't be afraid - it's just a microscope...it won't hurt you. In fact, it may save your life someday if it hasn't already. (I chose a particularly old-timey instrument because I thought it might seem less threatening. I worried that the sight of an electron microscope might cause instant strokes amongst the science-haters out there).

Finally, we have a President who thinks that science isn't a four-letter word. Obama gave a speech at the National Academy of Science. First President to even visit it since JFK! Here's a bit of what he said:

At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before.

Yeah. Them's words I've been needing to hear a President of the United States say (and mean) my whole life.

Stupid Cows!

Why a basic ignorance of and disdain for scientific knowledge may yet kill us all.

Science, 1 - Religion, 0

The President gave us back science today. Thank you, sir. Now give us back Pluto!

And, in an unrelated story (cough, cough), fewer Americans claim to be religious now than in the last 20 years.

Yeah, science! Yeah, decline and fall of religion!

Yeah!!!