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stcynic | October 11, 2005
Charles Darwin's Galapagos tortoise, Harriet, is turning 175 and Australia is throwing a party for her. This really is one of the most fascinating stories to me. When Darwin was aboard the Beagle as a naturalist in 1835, doing the study that formed the basis for his later theorizing on evolution, he brought back three tortoises from the Galapagos islands. He named them Tom, Dick and Harry. Dick died in the 1880s sometime, while Tom lived until 1949. In 1960, a visiting zoo director examined the last remaining tortoise and realized that it was female, prompting the name change from Harry to…
stcynic | October 10, 2005I got an email from a reader asking if the title of this blog was taken from Danny Goldberg's book of the same name. I've actually gotten this question before, but I don't think I ever answered it publicly. The answer is no. In fact, I'd never heard of Goldberg or this book until long after I'd started this blog and I had to look them up. Turns out this book, which apparently deals with the importance of pop culture and music in politics, was published in June of 2003, just a few months before I started writing under the same title here.
The real story of the title is that I stole it from…
stcynic | October 9, 2005I'm off to Lansing for an MCFS board meeting and my pre-winter trip to the big city for supplies (I'm out of gingham and rock candy). See ya'll tomorrow.
stcynic | October 8, 2005Okay, I busted into the brisket that was included in the BBQ gift that my Texas reader sent me. I am not exaggerating when I say it was the best brisket I've ever had. I didn't put any of their vinegar-based sauce on it. Instead, I put slices of it on a kaiser roll with a horseradish mayonnaise and it was spectacular. This would really make a great signature sandwich for a restaurant/bar. It was melt-in-your-mouth good. It's incredible that you can put this piece of leathery meat in a smoker for 12-18 hours, pack it on ice and send it 1500 miles away and it's still so delicious that you can…
stcynic | October 5, 2005My BBQ giftbox from Cooper's arrived this morning. Holy cow, way more than I expected - a whole brisket, a rack of spare ribs, two huge pork chops, some smoked sausage, summer sausage and a bottle of BBQ sauce. I put the spareribs on the grill and reheated them tonight and I'm currently in that "oh my god if I ate one more bite I'd explode" phase. When I first pulled them out, I had my doubts. There was an inordinate amount of coarsely cracked pepper on it, enough that I thought it would overwhelm the taste. But with the sauce on, the two layers of flavor actually worked perfectly. They were…
stcynic | October 4, 2005I forgot to mention this, but the Panda's Thumb, the group science blog I co-founded a year and a half ago, has just been named one of the top science websites by Scientific American. They wrote:
If it's in the media and related to evolution, you'll find it posted, dissected and debated on this lively and informative watchdog blog. Devoted to debunking all existing and nascent theories related to the anti-evolution movement, the site's contributors comprise a passel of the world's most vigilant and passionate biologists, geneticists, students and concerned citizens for whom stemming the tide…
stcynic | October 3, 2005I am the lucky recipient of another completely unexpected gift from a reader. A reader from Texas named Jeff emailed me today and said he would like to send me a gift basket of authentic Texas BBQ from Cooper's Old Time Pit BBQ, one of the most famous and well reviewed BBQ joints in the nation. I don't know what all is included, but I'm sure there'll be some brisket, which is the heart and soul of Texas BBQ. I didn't start this blog to get rewarded like this, but I sure as hell ain't gonna say no to good BBQ! This is just a way to say thanks to Jeff for his generosity and thoughtfulness. Now…
stcynic | October 1, 2005Great research from the indispensible Radley Balko about the alleged link between pornography and rape, teen pregnancy and other bad things. With the attorney general cranking up the porn prosecutions and the religious right foaming at the mouth about the easy availability of porn on the internet (I happen to agree that porn is too accessible online, but not with their solutions) causing every imaginable evil, one would think that the last decade, with the internet becoming ubuiquitous, we'd see increasing rates of such things. In fact, the opposite is true.
As Balko points out, sex crimes…
stcynic | September 30, 2005I've been so busy writing about the Dover trial that I feel I may be failing at my job of irritating both sides of the living false dichotomy that is the American political system. Let's fix that. We seem to be in an outbreak of feminist concern over sports issues. Eric Buzuvis, a law professor at the University of Iowa, is upset that the visiting locker rooms at the Iowa football stadium are painted pink, something that legendary coach Hayden Fry started decades ago. Buzuvis sees this as reinforcing sexist and homophobic stereotypes:
"With a pink locker room, you're saying that 'You are a…
stcynic | September 29, 2005Bartholemew has a typically thorough article about Zion Oil and Gas and their investment scam trying to find oil in Israel. The Worldnutdaily has been pimping this company for months, including having their writer Hal Lindsey write articles encouraging people to invest in it without revealing that his family had a major financial stake in the project. And as Bartholemew points out, this is merely the recycling of an old scam. And they're always this close to finding the oil, if only they had more money. These are the Ron Wyatt's of the oil industry.
stcynic | September 29, 2005Anyone remember the Atlanta courthouse shootings last March, when a felon named Brian Nichols shot and killed a judge, stole a car and fled the courthouse, leading to a big manhunt? If you do, I'm sure you can't possibly forget Ashley Smith, the woman who was on every single network simultaneously telling the story of how she talked Nichols into turning himself in by talking to him about her faith in God. On every network, she tearfully told the story of how she pulled out a copy of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, a bestselling bit of Christian motivational tripe, and talked to him…
stcynic | September 28, 2005I'm really, really, really tired of the comment spam so I'm going to try something new. I've changed my settings to require Typekey authentication. You can get a registered Typekey account for free by clicking here. Once you have it, you can sign in when you go to leave a comment and it will allow you to post a comment once you authenticate. No one who does not have a Typekey account will be allowed to comment. This is an experiment to see if it works to cut down on the spam. If it doesn't work, I'll change it back. If you have a Typekey account and it still won't let you post a comment,…
stcynic | September 27, 2005I don't know how this happened, but I got linked by Slate magazine today regarding the Dover trial. So if you're new here because you saw the link in Slate, stick around. I'm guessing you'll either love me or hate me.
stcynic | September 24, 2005For the last couple weeks I've been dying to get my hands on a transcript of the NCBCPS press conference where they responded to the Texas Freedom Network's criticism of their bible curriculum, mostly because I wanted to see what sort of stupid things Chuck Norris might have said. Last night I got an email from Ed Darrell that may explain why I can't find one. He has it on the authority of Heather Alden, the TFN's tireless media director, that no press showed up at their press conference (which was held at the National Press Club, as many Washington events are). That's absolutely hysterical.…
stcynic | September 23, 2005And it tells me nothing I didn't already know:
You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (60% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian
Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Link
stcynic | September 23, 2005Damn it all, why don't I get good hate mail like Paul Phillips does? The misspellings, the poor grammar, the obvious misreading of what Paul said....it's priceless.
stcynic | September 23, 2005Wiley Bennett, pastor of Woodland Hill Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas, welcomed Katrina evacuees into his community with these words on the message sign in front of his church: "The Big Easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah."
I'm sure Jesus would be proud. (link)
To be fair, one must note that there are thousands of good Christian people (as well as many non-Christians) working diligently to help the people devestated by the hurricane and the churches have done a great deal of fundraising and hard work to help those in need. I'm sure those people are as appalled by this minister as I am.
stcynic | September 20, 2005This is incredibly exciting news. One of my old and dear friends, Aaron Dworkin, founder and director of the Sphinx Organization, which provides education and opportunities to minority youth in classical music, has been awarded a Macarthur Foundation Genius Fellowship for 2005. The Detroit Free Press reports:
Aaron Dworkin has devoted his career to building diversity in classical music, and anyone who has witnessed him on his soapbox knows he speaks with the passion of a preacher and the stamina of a filibustering senator.
But when he received the call last week informing him that he had won…
stcynic | September 15, 2005I've been remiss in keeping up with events at the Panda's Thumb, the group science blog I helped found a year and a half ago. I'm happy to say that it has become one of the blogosphere's most widely read. In fact, as Wes Elsberry noted the other day, we've just passed the one million hit mark (and this blog passed a quarter million hits around the same time). There is much news to report as well on the ID front.
Larry Caldwell's nuisance suit against Genie Scott and the NCSE, it turns out, was dropped back in July but he didn't bother to tell anyone that. Now that Genie is no longer under a…
stcynic | September 15, 2005If you ever need a good working definition of irony, look no further. This one almost reads like a parody from The Onion. The Las Vegas Weekly, by way of Walter Olson, by way of Josh Claybourn, reports that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has hired part time temp workers making $6 an hour with no benefits to picket outside a Walmart store to protest low wages and poor working conditions. Meanwhile, the Walmart store starts employees at $6.75 an hour and doesn't make them stand for hours at a time in the sun in 104 degree weather. And of course, irony sharpens irony:
But standing…