Carnivalia and an open thread

Archaeologists discover 8-million-year-old forest in Hungary

BUKKABRANY, Hungary (AFP) - Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary.
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"The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified," Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP.
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"The exceptional state of preservation of the trees is due to a sudden sandstorm which covered the forest (with sand) up to a height of six metres," Kazmer said.
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Six meters of sand in a "sudden" sandstorm? Perhaps climate change is not as benign as the right wing apologists would have us believe.

Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
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A new reason to profess belief in fairies.

And don't forget the 2nd edition of the new paleo-carnival, The Boneyard.

Here's a twist on the old "teach the controversy" line that I haven't seen before.
"best practice with an integrated curriculum"

No One Cares, Mr. Pope

The Pope has come out in the last few weeks and reiterated two things: first, no other religion but Catholicism is divinely supported; second, evolution is consistent with Catholicism's doctrine. But while both made headlines and the former comment was furiously blogged about, truly very few took notice. Even Catholics.

The satirical blog, Baptists for Brownback has a comment on the Scarlet A campaign... They've decided to copyright the remaining 25 letters of the alphabet in the name of Christianity, which has led to one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Please enjoy.

Donal Rumsfeld "accidentally" leaked name of Abu Ghraib whistle blower

Hi there.

Long time reader, first time poster.

I was at the YearlyKos Convention and during the breakout session with Sen. John Edwards I got the opportunity to ask him about how he planned to address the concerns of atheists who are put off by politicians always using religious language. He had a very good answer saying that he preferred to use the language of morality rather than the language of faith because the President needs to represent everyone whether they believe in the Christian God, some other form of god, or no god at all. He asked me if I had any objection to his using the word "moral" and I said no, "you don't need to believe in God to be moral" and that comment elicited a round of applause from the room.

I wrote about this in my DailyKos Diary and it has sparked a lot of comment discussion over there. If you are interested in reading the full account you can go here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/6/13936/85325

Thanks.

-Derek

Entombed microbes flourish again in lab

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Oh, man, did I mess up.

I'm really sorry about that booby explosion up there. I've been working on some command-line posting utilities and it looks like I've got an error in there that created booby-apocalypse.

A booby-apocalypse wouldn't be such a bad way to go, you know.

So many boobies!

In other news, the Library of Congress properly sorts Bibles into the BS subclass. Google "Library of Congress Classification System" to check it out (Scienceblogs isn't letting me post URLs...)

hey, you forgot to include Scientiae!!

http://twicetenured.blogspot.com/2007/08/august-scientiae-carnival-bala…

I'm surprised I haven't seen a comment about these Jesus Toys yet.

I hope this doesn't cause another booby-apocalypse.

It's a sign: Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea

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