UDreamOfJanie

Say Goodbye

2006-12-14T20:09:00.000-05:00

It is done.

I have successfully imported all the posts and comments from this blog to my home computer, and then over to our new WordPress Blog.

Comments are now turned off here, to keep the conversations in one place.

I'm gonna miss this place, I put a lot of work into it.

Please update your links and visit us now at UDreamOfJanie on WordPress.

I have some categorizing to do over there and some clean up and such, but we'll be watching for you.

Kisses.

JanieBelle, Corporal Kate, and The Boy.

Science Is Taking Another Beating

2006-12-14T11:54:00.000-05:00

at the hands of the George Orwell Bush Administration.

(This story is also cross posted at our Wordpress Blog.)

I latched on to this story via Stolen Moments, but it's being covered all over the mainstream press, as well as the BlogOSphere.

Stolen Moments' blog post begins thus:

According to documents released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, . At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar.

In a letter dated November 30, 2006, four incoming House Democratic committee chairs demanded that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson assure them “that the destruction or disposition of all library holdings immediately ceased upon the Agency’s receipt of this letter and that all records of library holdings and dispersed materials are being maintained.” On the very next day, December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA’s Washington D.C. Headquarters.

Here we go again.

In a September 21^st story on Yubanet and repeated on Truthout.org ^{(sources below)}, the story of the EPA closing public libraries begins somewhat quietly.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the other library collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone.

The Headquarters Library collection contains 380,000 documents on microfiche (including technical reports produced by EPA and its predecessor agencies), a microforms collection that includes back files of abstracts and indexes, 5,500 hard copy EPA documents, as well as more than 16,000 books and technical reports produced by government agencies other than EPA.^{1, 3}

So the EPA was closing its headquarters library in Washington, and had already begun closing other libraries in Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City.

According to the Office of Budget & Management Circular A-130, the EPA is required to publicly announce such closures before they happen, and in the case of the headquarters library they made such an announcement, albeit a mere ten days before the closure. In the case of the other libraries, there was no such announcement at all.^{1, 3}

Now although these libraries serve the general public, who really cares about EPA libraries, right? Seriously, have you or anyone you know ever been to one? Probably not. Is one of these libraries on your list of ten places you simply must go before you die? Probably not even on your top 100 list.

Here's the thing. These libraries are accessed all the time by environmental scientists. These libraries house boatloads of information and data collected about the environment by all sorts of methods, and necessary for the proper study of environmental change. They are necessary for enforcement officials of the EPA itself to track and expose polluters. Ahhh... herein lies the crux of the matter.

Scientists who are studying both natural and human effects on global climate change are now without several huge repositories of historical and current data on the environment. EPA enforcement officials are now unable to compare the amount of current pollution in a local stream or river to the amount of pollution say, twenty years ago.

This is a serious problem, and it was seen as such by Congressional Committee leaders.

EPA's library closures (which the agency euphemistically calls "deaccessioning procedures") are sparking congressional scrutiny. On September 19th, the Ranking Members of the House Committee on Science, Energy & Commerce and Government Reform (Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), respectively) asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the effects that the EPA library closures will have on access to environmental information and the impacts on scientific research, regulatory quality and enforcement capability.^{1, 3}

A reasonable and important request, given the vast amounts of important data being boxed up quietly and indefinitely.

The EPA's rationale? Funding. The EPA tells us that it will save a large amount of money by closing these libraries and digitizing their contents. That's admirable on its face, but Russel Shaw casts a somewhat different light on the financial situation in the Huffington Post.

In an action unknown to almost all Americans except policy wonks, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun closing its network of 27 technical libraries. The process, which also includes the EPA Headquarters library in Washington, D.C., was set to begin today, October 1, the onset of the 2007 Fiscal Year. Some $2 million will be saved by the closures.

Yet with seeming eagerness, the EPA has already begun the file transfer. for is less than a third the amount an internal EPA study estimates the libraries save EPA professionals in staff time and is 80% of the libraries' annual $2.5 million budget has some people wondering if the real agenda is driven by politics rather than financial management.

Although the EPA says in part that the closure is being prompted by the trend to make records accessible online rather than in dead-tree form, virtually none of the EPA records that exist prior to 1990 have been digitized.

Currently, these older records exist either in boxes or on microfilm. The latter storage media is exceptionally expensive to digitize.⁴

Mr. Shaw also very kindly provides a link to a .mp3 audio podcast of Ira Flatow discussing the situation on Science Friday (we're huge fans!) with Jeff Ruch, of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Interestingly enough, the EPA declined to have a representative appear on the show.⁵

I'm not surprised.

Rebecca Carr ran an excellent story a month later (November 1^st) for Cox Newspapers wherein she cuts to the chase.

But EPA employees and watchdog groups are skeptical that the agency's library in Atlanta will remain untouched in the future.

An internal June 8, 2006, memo from Lyons Gray, the EPA's chief financial officer, to top agency officials, indicates that the agency plans even deeper cuts next year, including at laboratories where much of the agency's research takes place. If labs are closing, employees say, everything is on the table.

In that memo, Lyons wrote that agency must "identify opportunities for consolidation and streamlining." That includes cutting the labs' costs by 20 percent over the next five years and closing an unspecified number of them.

"I think the level of cuts are really just a foretaste of what's to come," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonpartisan environmental watchdog group based in Washington. "Every thing is up for grabs. Atlanta could easily be on the chopping block."

The Bush administration wants to defang the EPA to benefit industry, which has long resisted the agency's pollution reporting requirements, Ruch said.

"This is a slow-motion lobotomy of the agency," Ruch said.⁶

This is exactly what's going on. The Bush Administration is deliberately hog-tying the EPA to protect big businesses that spew pollutants into the environment, so that they will not be prevented or penalized for their wanton destruction. It's all about the bottom line, and circumventing Congress and the law is no barrier to Mr. Bush.

Francesca Grifo, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Boston Globe in a story that ran December 3^rd, ""Nobody is against modernization, but we don't see the digitization. We just see the libraries closing."⁷

So while the EPA was insisting that the records would be digitized and made accessible again to the public, two months later the libraries are still closing, and there's no indication of that digitizing.

The next day, the Austin American-Statesman noted:

A group of senior Democratic lawmakers has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop closing its public libraries and discarding collection materials until it has permission from Congress.

“We request that you maintain the status quo of the libraries and their materials while this issue is under investigation and review by Congress,” Reps. John Dingell, the ranking member of the Energy Committee; Bart Gordon, ranking member of the Science Committee; James Oberstar, the ranking member of the Transportation Committee and Henry Waxman, the ranking member of the Government Reform Committee, wrote in a Nov. 30th letter to Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the EPA.⁸

Good. The Democrats, soon to be in power, are demanding that the EPA cease and desist its shenanigans.

The same day, Facing South gives us a practical means of pressuring the EPA ourselves.

The letter follows a call earlier this month from Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and 16 other senators to the Appropriations Committee asking the EPA to be directed to halt the closures "while the Agency solicits and considers public input on its plan to drastically cut its library budget and services," the American Library Association reports.

After UCS issued its alert about the closures on Friday, protest calls reportedly began pouring into the office of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. UCS is asking the public to keep up the pressure by calling Johnson at (202) 564-4700 and urging him to immediately halt the dismantling of the library system until Congress approves the EPA budget and all materials are readily available online.⁹

Please make that call. Make it several times. Make it several times a day.

Joel A. Mintz and Rebecca Bratspies, Guest columnists for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, hit the nail on the head on December 6^th:

One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration's six-year effort to undercut environmental protection has been its contempt for the free flow of information.

Early on, the White House rewrote conclusions of the Environmental Protection Agency's scientists on global warming. Then it refused to disclose which companies and lobbyists helped draft its energy policy. Now it is seeking to weaken the Toxic Release Inventory, the 20-year-old law that requires polluters to disclose publicly the extent of their pollution.¹⁰

You'd think by this time the Bush Administration would get the hint: closing EPA libraries is a bad idea. The people who access it are against it, the scientists who make use of the data are against it, the EPA enforcement officers are against it, it won't save much if any money, and can be only detrimental to the health and study of the environment.

But don't hold your breath waiting for Mr. Bush to come to grips with reality.

On December 7^th, Yubanet runs a follow up piece.

In defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar.²

That's right. The same people who told us that the EPA was closing libraries to digitize all the records and save money by putting them all online, is destroying the online records that already exist!

Further, they are selling off the real world assets.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an effort to limit Congressional options, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of the several libraries that it has already completely shuttered. In its Chicago office, which formerly hosted one of the largest regional libraries, EPA ordered that all furniture and furnishings (down to the staplers and pencil sharpeners) be sold immediately. Despite an acquisition cost of $40,000 for the furniture and equipment, a woman bought the entire lot for $350. The buyer also estimates that she will re-sell the merchandise for $80,000.

"One big irony is that EPA claimed the reason it needed to close libraries was to save money but in the process they are spending and wasting money like drunken sailors," Ruch added, noting EPA refuses to say how much it plans to spend digitizing the mountains of documents that it has removed from library shelves. "While the Pentagon had its $600 toilet seat and $434 hammer, EPA has its 29 cent book case and file cabinets for a nickel."

In spite of its pleas of poverty, EPA is spending millions on a public relations campaign to improve the image of its research program, as well as a $2.7 million program (more than its estimated savings from library closures ) to digitize all employee personnel files, in a program called "eOPF."

"No one believes that EPA is closing libraries and crating up irreplaceable collections for fiscal reasons," Ruch concluded. "Instead, the real agenda appears to be controlling access by its own specialists and outside researchers to key technical information."²

On the 8^th of December, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Leslie Burger, the president of the American Library Association and director of the Princeton Public Library, decrying the closures.¹¹

On the 9^th, the Los Angeles Times' Tim Reiterman ran a story detailing another impact on science.

The NASA library in Greenbelt, Md., was part of John C. Mather's daily routine for years leading up to the astrophysicist's 2006 Nobel Prize for shedding new light on the Big Bang theory of universal origin.

So when he learned that federal officials are planning to close the library, Mather was stunned.

"It is completely absurd," he said. "The library is a national treasure. It is probably the single strongest library for space science and engineering in the universe."¹²

There is no longer any pretense behind which they can hide. The administration is deliberately denying access to publicly owned federal documents and records. It is actively blocking scientists and researchers from exposing the damage that large polluters are doing to the environment. It is closing off information about global warming and astrophysics. It isn't doing it to save money, it isn't doing it to modernize access. It is doing it to promote an alternate reality wherein the public sees and hears only what the White House wants it to see and hear.

These tactics are well known across the globe. There have been many governments over time that limited the free access to information. Not a one of them did it for democratic principles. Not a one of them did it for the people.

This administration is no exception. George W. Bush, who is the ultimate boss of the EPA and other executive branch libraries, is responsible for this egregious attempt at censoring information from the public that directly contradicts his propaganda version of reality.

This war on science led by the President must be stopped in its tracks.

Hat tip and thanks go to TimeThief at Stolen Moments

Sources:
1. Yubanet Original Story
2. Yubanet Follow-Up
3. Truthout.org
4. Huffington Post
5. Science Friday podcast (.mp3)
6. Cox News
7. Boston Globe
8. Austin American Statesman
9. Facing South, the blog of the Institute for Southern Studies
10. Seattle Post Intelligencer
11. New York Times op-ed
12. Houston Chronicle

Blog Announcement

2006-12-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

Because Blogger has forced the issue by blocking all us old blogspot bloggers from commenting on any of the new Beta blogs, we are going to be doing everything we can to get the WordPress importer to rescue us NOW.

Since the importer does not work on the new Beta blogs, we have to get it done before Blogger forcibly moves us to Beta.

Raspberries to Blogger on both counts.

What this means is that I will be stripping this blog down to its bare essentials attempting to figure out what the hell is holding up the importer. (Don't worry, I've saved the template and will be able to restore it until Blogger forces us out.) I do not want to lose all the great history here.

Please excuse the ugly decor while this is going on.

Another Stolen Election?

2006-12-14T06:44:00.000-05:00

Story cross posted at our Wordpress blog.

In the 2000 presidential election, the people elected Vice President Al Gore. The Supreme Court of the United States, aided by Florida Republican Governor (who happened to be the losing candidate's brother) and his unhinged State Attorney General, denied the people's will, and appointed George W. Bush President of the United States.

Six years later, because of the sudden illness of a Democratic Senator, another Republican Governor is in a position to do the same thing in the United States Senate.

Just over a month ago, in an election that went down to the wire, the people decided they had had enough of the Republican agenda of lies and deceit and warmongering. They elected a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, spelling an end to rubber stamp approval of whatever the White House desired. They elected to stop the Republicans in the Congress from allowing Dubya to ignore our Constitutionally guaranteed protections from his Jack-booted agents of fascism.

The people of the United States of America demanded that we stop the illegal war in Iraq. They demanded that Habeas Corpus be reinstated. They demanded that the requirement for search warrants be enforced.

They threw the bums out.

This morning, CNN is reporting that Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, took suddenly and severely ill yesterday afternoon. In fact, he fell so ill that his symptoms were described as "stroke-like", and he required brain surgery.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was in critical condition Thursday after undergoing surgery, a hospital source told The Associated Press.

Johnson had brain surgery early Thursday at George Washington University Hospital after suffering stroke-like symptoms, two Democratic sources familiar with his condition told CNN.

There was no formal announcement of the South Dakota senator's condition, The Associated Press reported, but a person in the hospital's media relations office, who declined to be identified, said the hospital was preparing to announce that Johnson's condition was critical.

First and foremost, our hearts go out to him and his family. Our best wishes go to them, and our hopes for his quick and complete recovery. The Senator's spokesperson is reporting that he suffered neither a stroke nor a heart attack, which is a little good news. Hopefully, doctors have fixed whatever is ailing Senator Johnson.

From the CNN story:

His wife, in the office to have lunch with him, rode with him, Fisher said.

"It transpired very fast," she said, adding the senator's staff was shaken by the incident.

But, she said of the hospital, "we keep reminding ourselves, this is where they take Dick Cheney."

But while our primary concern is for the man, his family, and his recovery, we cannot help but notice the implications for the entire country.

Should the Senator be the victim of something which prevents him from finishing the final year of his term (he was elected in 1996 and re-elected in 2002), South Dakota state law gives the power to appoint his replacement to the Governor of that state. A Republican Governor.

Should the Senator not be able to complete his term, and should the Governor of South Dakota appoint a Republican replacement, there will be a total of 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats in the United States Senate, and in a vote, tie goes to the Administration by way of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Once again, the will of the people would be ignored. Once again, the White House will have the rubber stamp approval of a boot licking Republican Senate. While the President's power will still be diminished by the overwhelming defeats he suffered in the House of Representatives, the people's voice will be silenced in such matters as judicial appointments.

The honorable thing for South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds to do, of course, would be to appoint a Democratic replacement for Senator Johnson. The politically expedient thing for him to do would be to appoint a Republican.

The question then, is if the situation arises, will Governor Mike Rounds show his loyalty to this country, or to his party?

I can feel the White House salivating over this tragedy from here, and the maniacal laughter from Washington woke me up in a cold sweat this morning.

Vote For BadAstronomy!

2006-12-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

Dr. BA needs your help to stop the invading squid horde! A vote for Dr. Phil Plait of BadAstronomy is a vote for kittens!

Click the image to go vote NOW! Remember, you can vote once every day!

You must do your part to advance the cause of all backboned creatures everywhere! If PZ wins, creepy, crawly, squishy things will be given the right to sneak into your bed at night and slime you... or something worse! Are you really OK with man-on-squid love? There HAS to be something against that in the Bible! It's unnatural and disgusting!

If you don't vote for Dr. BA, hurricanes will destroy Dover, PA! Fire and brimstone will rain down on Kansas! American marriage will be destroyed! Communism will take over, and we'll all be sent to concentration camps by the secret Evil Cephalopod Conspiracy! Ebola will kill us all!

PZ MUST BE STOPPED OR DEMOCRATS WILL TAKE OVER THE CONGRESS!

(What? It works for Robertson!)

P.S. Send me ~~money~~ love offerings to help us in our time of need.

The NSTA Is Feeding Us A Line

2006-12-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

This story has gone back and forth, and quite honestly, so have I. I was outraged, then relieved, then confused, then lost. I'm back to outraged.

After about 6 hours more reading about the National Science Teachers of America than I ever cared to do, please allow me to be very blunt.

The NSTA is selling a pound of digital bologna, but I'm not buying it.

They have been doing the deceitful tapdance of the publicly convicted criminal who's looking for a technicality to get off. They are playing semantic games and they are doing their level best to deflect the spotlight from shining on them, because they understand completely that it does not show them in a very favorable light.

Before I continue, let me back up.

An Inconvenient Truth

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

Thus opens the About page at the film's website.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film featuring former Vice President Al Gore discussing the impact of human society on the environment. (You can also view the trailer here.) The film looks at Mr. Gore's traveling exhibit on global warming, and at the man himself. By all accounts, this is a well presented film.

An Uncomfortable Science

While there are still doubters amongst the scientific community, the ever-growing consensus on the topic within that community is that global temperatures are rising, and human activity is partially to blame. According to The Earth Institute at Columbia University,

2005 was the warmest year ever recorded, beating the previous record high set in 1998 and continue a general trend of rising temperatures dating back to 1980.

In May 2005, scientists concluded the Earth is absorbing more of the sun's energy than is being emitted back into space, disrupting the planet's energy balance and resulting in global warming.

Scientists agree the Earth's climate is being directly affected by human activity, and for many people around the world, these changes are having negative effects. Carbon dioxide levels today are nearly 30 percent higher than they were prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution, based on records extending back 650,000 years.

According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the rate of 9 percent per decade. Arctic ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s. The current pace of sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.

The science is strong. The earth is getting warmer, and we as a species are contributing to our own demise.

An Unselfish Offer

On September 30^th of this year, Lynn Hirshfield sent an EMail to Gerry Wheeler of the NSTA in which she offered free DVDs of the film to the NSTA for distribution to their members. 50,000 of them.

-----Original Message-----From: lynn hirshfield [mailto: "Lynn Hirshfield"]
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 12:49 PM To: Gerry Wheeler Subject:
Al Gore/An Inconvenient Truth
Dear Dr. Wheeler,
I work for Paramount Pictures and we have received donations to provide free DVDS of the film "An Inconvenient Truth" for sciences teachers and students across the country. We would like to know if we could work with your organization to distribute these DVDs in a systematic manner. I've attached some information about our program. Please call me if you have suggestions or questions. Lynn Hirshfield 310-4XX-XX80 Thank you!

An Unsettling Answer

The NSTA refused. In an October 12^th EMail to Ms. David, David Beacom of the NSTA responded that they did not wish to be put in a position where they would be obligated to distribute materials for other special interest groups. That sounds reasonable on its face. He and the people with whom he consulted also mentioned that they didn't want to be drug into the political arena. Huh? That's an odd statement to make. Mr. Gore doesn't seem to be running for any office. Neither are any of the producers, as far as I can determine. Science certainly shouldn't be considered political, although the current administration seems to feel otherwise.

They also stated that they see little benefit in distributing the science video to their science teacher members. That just doesn't seem to make sense.

But then they make a most unsettling statement. They tell Ms. David that by accepting this free DVD and distributing it to their members, it would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters."

I'm sorry. What was that? The National Science Teachers of America is concerned about accepting and distributing a science DVD because it might upset their benefactors? What sort of benefactors to an organization of science teachers might be upset by the distribution of a science DVD?

Turns out, Exxon. ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips and the American Petroleum Institute are all donors to the NSTA. While supporting science teachers is commendable, the idea that those science teachers should feel pressured to suppress science in deference to that support is deplorable. The Catholic Church supported science this way during the middle ages. It was all peaches and cream until Galileo started spouting off about the earth not being the center of the universe.

Now there's nothing wrong with large corporations, even oil companies, donating large sums of money to support science teachers as long as there are no strings attached. The second those donations influence the science, the science becomes tainted, worthless.

This is exactly what's happening here. As soon as the NSTA begins making science education decisions based on whether or not the large oil companies will continue their support, it calls into question the integrity of the organization and the education for which it is supposed to advocate.

An Unfavorable Opinion Piece

On Sunday, November 26^th, Laurie David wrote a derisive opinion of the NSTA's decision and the reasoning behind it in the Washington Post. The piece is entitled Science a la Joe Camel.

I got wind of it via Coturnix, and blogged about it two days later, on the 28^th.

In it, Ms. David describes the offer, the EMail response, the connection to big oil companies, and the implications of the decision making criteria on the education of our students.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

Let me point out again that the NSTA's EMail response to Ms. David gave as its reasons for denial -

1. The wish to not be beholden to "special interests".

2. A possible conflict with major donors.

3. Little benefit to its members in distribution of a film about the fossil fuel industry's role in global warming.

This is not the way I expect science teachers to educate. Even if this is completely innocent, it looks bad, smells funny, and tastes like crap. This is an organization that should at all times be above reproach, avoiding even the appearance of unseemly influence.

An Unequivocal Denial

That afternoon, an anonymous commenter pointed me in the direction of the response by the NSTA. A quick glance at the blogometer told me that this commenter popped in from TX, and was behind the NSTA firewall. Not surprising, given the topic, and I was both happy for the information, and very relieved that things were not so bad after all. I edited my post to include the entire NSTA response, and I do so again here.

NSTA Press Release
NSTA Statement on November 26 Washington Post Op-ed "Science à la Joe Camel"
Nov 28 2006

On November 26, the Washington Post printed an opinion piece from environmental activist Laurie David, a producer of the film "An Inconvenient Truth." In her op-ed Ms. David reports that NSTA rejected the opportunity to distribute 50,000 copies of the DVD to NSTA members.

NSTA policy states that the association cannot endorse any outside organization's products and/or messages to its members. Therefore, we do not send any such products and/or messages directly to our members, regardless of the source.

What was not mentioned in the op-ed is the fact that during conversations with Ms. David's representative we suggested making the DVD available via alternative means of distribution (e.g. by providing a mailing list of our members to producers, announcing its availability in our publications, etc.). It appears that these alternative distribution mechanisms were unsatisfactory.

It was not the intent of the NSTA to restrict "An Inconvenient Truth" from its members and we are currently pursuing options to make the DVD available to teachers.

In the op-ed Ms. David goes on to characterize NSTA as a willing corporate America partner that eagerly pushes corporate messages about the environment.

This is not true.

The perception created by the op-ed that NSTA has a conflict of interest in dealing with corporate America is misleading. This is a very serious issue to NSTA and science education. Like many organizations, NSTA does receive support from corporate America and other organizations (in FY06 total corporate support received by NSTA was 16.4% and total support from energy companies was 3.77%). Before we accept any funds from outside groups (corporate or otherwise), and as a condition of any support, we make it clear that NSTA is solely responsible for developing, directing, and implementing the programs we offer to teachers.

Let me specifically address the programs outlined in the op-ed: ExxonMobil has been a long-time sponsor of the national network we call Building a Presence for Science. In this project we have identified a "point of contact" for science in over 40,000 school buildings. Originally conceived to provide a copy of the National Science Education Standards to each school, NSTA now regularly sends these points of contact useful information on science education that they share with teachers in their buildings. Not once has ExxonMobil asked to use this network for their own purposes.

The Shell Oil Company funds national research science experts to present at our national conference, where they speak directly to science teachers about their field of research. NSTA chooses the scientists, invites the scientists, and hosts the scientists at these conferences. In addition, the Shell Oil Company sponsors the Shell Science Teaching award for K-12 science teachers who have had a positive impact on his or her students, school, and community through exemplary classroom teaching. This award program is administered by NSTA and the recipients are chosen by science teachers selected by NSTA.

The partnership with API, which ended 5 years ago, led to the creation of a simulation, done entirely by NSTA, on energy usage. The video in question, "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel" was not on our website. The only record of NSTA distributing it to members we found was from 1999, prior to the current endorsement policy.

Global warming is a very important science/societal issue. NSTA has always supported sound environmental science education. We regret this current controversy surrounding our decision not to mass distribute the DVD to our members, and we are working to promote the availability of the film.

In response to an October 2005 report titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a strong consensus is emerging in the business, education, and scientific communities that our nation's future competitiveness in the global marketplace is directly tied to the ability of our schools to better prepare children in mathematics and the sciences. We should be discussing positive ways of how we can work together to strengthen the science education we provide to our nation's students.

The mission of the NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all, and for over 50 years NSTA has been a staunch supporter of quality science education. We are very proud of the work we do on behalf of science education.

Dr. Gerald Wheeler
Executive Director
National Science Teachers Association

An Unexplainable Alteration

Then something sort of strange happened. The next day, a second anonymous commenter mentioned that part of the response quoted in my post no longer appeared on the NSTA press release. I did a line by line check, and there were actually two portions of the NSTA response missing.

Here are the missing portions....

"NSTA policy states that the association cannot endorse any outside organization's products and/or messages to its members. Therefore, we do not send any such products and/or messages directly to our members, regardless of the source."

"The only record of NSTA distributing it to members we found was from 1999, prior to the current endorsement policy."

Those were both very strong statements, both very reassuring. They didn't just accidentally fall off the servers. Somebody erased those two specific passages, and for a reason. What reason could they have? I've been turning it over in my little brain for a while now, and quite honestly, the only reason I can come up with is that they must be demonstrably untrue.

So, if those passages have been removed because they are untrue, what would that mean? It could mean a few things.

First, it could mean that someone misunderstood NSTA policy, and that it says no such thing as the first missing passage. Second, it could mean that the NSTA does indeed send such products and/or messages directly to its members. The third sentence is very interesting. "The only record of NSTA distributing it to members we found was from 1999, prior to the current endorsement policy." It would seem somebody found another record that directly contradicts this statement.

On December 3^rd, I came across the Science article on the topic, and blogged about it briefly.

From the article in Science, written by Jeffrey Mervis on November 30^th

Not surprisingly, NSTA sees things differently. "We don't do mass distributions for anybody; we don't send our members material that they haven't asked for," says NSTA's executive director, Gerald Wheeler. As for the association's corporate ties, Wheeler freely acknowledges that 16% of NSTA's $23 million a year budget comes from businesses, including 3.7% from the oil and gas industry. "We're working hard to get corporate America engaged in reforming STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] education," he says. "And in no case has anybody asked us to say anything [on their behalf], which we would never agree to do, anyway."

Wheeler says NSTA has no desire to suppress information about global warming. Just last month, for example, NSTA's newsletter for middle school teachers ran a five-page article on the topic and mentioned Gore's movie in the first paragraph. He says NSTA has also offered to post a link to the movie on its Web site and to announce the availability of the DVD in a weekly e-mail letter and a monthly publication. In addition, David could put the DVD directly in teachers' hands by buying NSTA's mailing list, at $130 per 1000 names.

David says NSTA's imprimatur was essential and that buying a mailing list is a nonstarter. "You don't want to send out a cold letter, and it costs a lot of money," she says. "There are a thousand reasons why that wouldn't work."

At this point, there was quite a bit of back and forth to sort through.

An Unflattering Interview

Last night I received an email from Jon Coifman, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In the EMail, Mr. Coifman alerted me to two new rebuttals by Ms. David concerning this situation. I immediately posted his EMail to this blog, as I felt the information was crucial to understanding the debate, but withheld commentary about it until I could get a chance to go over this again, and research Ms. David's latest statements.

I also sent him a thank you note, though I felt it was probably an automated form letter. Mr. Coifman replied to me almost immediately, indicating that this was not, in fact, a form letter and was not automated.

Thank you again to Mr. Coifman.

Besides the honest disclosure of his affiliation with the NRDC and the two links, the heart of his note is this:

Among other things, it now turns out that although NSTA cited a no-endorsements policy for the global warming film, had no problem shipping at least 20,000 copies of a ConocoPhillips video series. It also looks like some of the things they said in their own defense aren’t adding up.

After reading the transcript of Ms. David's interview on Living On Earth (my browser is having audio plug-in issues) and her article at the Huffington Post, I must say that I agree with you, Mr. Coifman. Something is definitely not adding up.

An Inconvenient Truth

Among the first things Ms. David does in her latest article is link to a .pdf of the EMail conversation between herself and the board members of the NSTA.

The meat and potatoes of their answer:

--------------Original message -------------From: "David Beacom"

Lynn:

Well, bad news. For the reasons briefly summarized below, thoughtful folk here have decided that we should turn down your generous offer. I'm sure, when you review their reasoning, you'll understand their thinking--even if you don't quite agree. We recognize that you are trying to get important content into the hands of as many science teachers as possible. It's just that we turn out not to be the right channel for that distribution.

David Beacom

-----Original Message-----From: Ken French Sent: Thursday,
October 12, 2006 10:03 AM To: David Beacom Cc: Howard
Wahlberg; Larry Rzepka Subject: Al Gore/An Inconvenient Truth

David,

Howard, Larry, and I met this morning to discuss this opportunity and no longer need the Friday 3:00PM meeting. There is strong consensus that we should pass of this opportunity for a variety of reasons:
* There is little if any, benefit to NSTA or its membership
* There is risk of a possible implicit endorsement of NSTA
* They could buy our mailing list, or buy a more complete list of science teachers from QED, which leads us to believe there may be an unstated interest in ?endorsement by association?
* It may be perceived as a political endorsement by our membership
* It places unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters
* May set a precedence for distributing free materials for other special interest groups

Larry has agreed to draft our response in a more formal fashion, if necessary. Please let us know of steps taken, or steps that need to be taken.

Thanks,
Ken

Ms. David goes on to show how the NSTA distributed 20,000 copies of a ConocoPhillips 10 part video in 2003, two years after they claim current policy went into effect.

Now NSTA is arguing that distributing An Inconvenient Truth to teachers would violate their 2001 policy against endorsements. But that policy didn't stop them from shipping out 20,000 copies of a whopping 10-part video funded by ConocoPhillips in 2003.

In fact, Gerry Wheeler himself is listed as executive producer of the film series, alongside a ConocoPhillips corporate PR man named Ron Stanley. His interest in cinema apparently didn't extend to An Inconvenient Truth, however. At least not until it landed him in the paper.

Wheeler says this is OK because NSTA had editorial control of the project. If that's true, then maybe he can explain why the only scientist cited in the largely dismissive global warming section appearing in chapters six, nine and ten of the teaching guides is Dr. Robert Balling - a well known global warming skeptic who has acknowledged taking more than $400,000 from the fossil fuel industry (others say the figure is higher).

To make things even worse, they began covering their tracks by deleting and changing web pages.

We also discovered that somebody somewhere is meticulously shredding the online evidence of NSTA's cozy corporate partnerships.

NSTA now says it is no longer partners with the American Petroleum Institute, asserting that the project ended five years ago. Yet it looks as if the curriculum was alive and well until reporters started asking about it these past few weeks.

As of November 26 - the day the Post article appeared - both NSTA and API were promoting the course materials they produced together on their web sites. Immediately after the article appeared, however, we noticed that references to the joint "Science of Energy" program were quickly disappearing from the web.

The 'Science of Energy' website itself is now gone altogether, and API has rewritten language touting their relationship with the science educators. But we captured some telling links before they started vanishing.

Fortunately for all of us, Ms. David caught them red-handed.

Well, the NSTA leadership can't claim they don't distribute videos from interested parties, and they certainly can't cry "Too expensive" to distribute. They sure as hell can't claim they have the best interests of science or the kids at heart.

What they can do is own up to the fact that they are bought and paid for by the oil industry. And then they can resign.

Tsunami On The Sun

2006-12-09T15:58:00.000-05:00

This is freakin' cool. Over at Space.com I bumped into this really neato peachy keen animation of a solar flare generated tsunami on the sun.

It's wicked.

Article excerpt below the fold.

From the article -

A major flare on the Sun earlier this week generated what scientists are calling a solar tsunami.

The tsunami-like shock wave, formally called a Moreton wave, rolled across the hot surface, destroying two visible filaments of cool gas on opposite sides of the visible face of the Sun.

Astronomers using a prototype of a new solar telescope in New Mexico recorded the action.

"These large scale 'blast' waves occur infrequently, however, are very powerful," said K. S. Balasubramaniam of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Sunspot, NM, "They quickly propagate in a matter of minutes covering the whole Sun, sweeping away filamentary material."

EMail About the NSTA Dust Up

2006-12-08T19:17:00.000-05:00

Just got this in my email. It looks like a form letter, but maybe I'm just a force to be reckoned with...

[UPDATE: I sent a thank you note back to Jon anyway, and he replied almost immediately. This is NOT a form letter, so I suppose that I am indeed a force to be reckoned with... Look out, Mr. Bush's successor. I may be gunning for your job next! Anyway, I wanted to personally thank Jon here for taking the time to read this blog, and for taking the time to update me on this situation.]

Neither of the links given appears to work, and this will certainly require some research.

The first link is to another piece by Laurie David at the Huffington Post, and here is a proper link to that article.

The second link should point to a Living On Earth segment, I believe, and here is the transcript from that segment. There are also links for the audio segment there.

Ok, here's the email

Jon Coifman here from NRDC, following up on an item about the National Science Teachers Association that you blogged about a few days ago.

There are two important new stories out today adding more fuel to the fire, and more information about controversy involving oil company funding for NSTA and whether it had anything to do with their decision to reject an offer for 50,000 free copies of the Al Gore global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

The rest is below the fold...

The first is a detailed piece by Laurie David that appears here: www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/crooked-curriculum-oil-c_b_35829.html

Among other things, it now turns out that although NSTA cited a no-endorsements policy for the global warming film, had no problem shipping at least 20,000 copies of a ConocoPhillips video series. It also looks like some of the things they said in their own defense aren’t adding up.

The second story is a revealing public radio interview with Ms. David and Dr. Gerry Wheeler, NSTA’s Executive Director: www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=06-P13-00049&segmentID=1

DISCLOSURE: The reason you are receiving this from *me* is that I work for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where Ms. David is a member of the board, and we have been helping out with some of the background on this story. So yes, I am not a bystander.

But it’s a good story anyhow. And it’s an important one.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jon Coifman

Natural Resources Defense Council

I'll have to look into this some more....

Ya Probly Don't Wanna Pick On Me

2006-12-08T13:35:00.000-05:00

Kate's on a bit of a tear into some fundy, over at Imago Dei, my new friend Amanda's blog. Look out.

For a bit of background, Amanda is a "Love thy Neighbor" breed of Christian. I happen to be very fond of many of these folks.

She's got a fundy "God hates fags and you're enabling them" breed of Christian troll.

He picked on the wrong girl.

Dumbass.

P.S. Kate has this to say on her own blog....

STS 116 Launch

2006-12-07T21:30:00.000-05:00

'bout 6 1/2 minutes to launch. Watch NASATV here.

There was speculation about the weather. The clock is still rolling, so I guess we'll see.

Optical Illusion

2006-12-07T12:40:00.000-05:00

Kate found a really neat optical illusion on one of those MySpace image sites. It's pretty cool so I thought I'd share.

whoa.

KaylaFace's Bulletin

2006-12-06T22:37:00.000-05:00

This is too funny not to mention....

On MySpace (you can view my MySpace profile here and Kate's is here and Dr. BadAstronomer has one too!), there's a thing called a bulletin, which is sort of like an instant message to all your friends at once.

I got one yesterday from KaylaFace....

My Dad

Is the coolest guy in the whole world, and I love him more than all of you losers.

And no, this is not her Dad sneaking into her room while she's playing with the dog to post this when she isn't looking.

This is Kayla, and I mean it. Dad is cool. Dad is awesome. Dad rocks.

And this is a lesson to all her friends to not walk away from your computers while your Dad is home.

Not that this is her Dad or nuthin.

Because it's not.

Just so y'know.

He stole that last line from me.

REALLY Recent Water On Mars!

2006-12-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

I'm not even gonna summarize! Just go see the BA at BadAstronomy!

Flowing water WITHIN THE LAST SEVEN YEARS! (or at least a VERY strong case for it!)

WOW!

Disease Runneth Rampant

2006-12-06T12:59:00.000-05:00

Stop by and wish The Boy and his family a get well soon. ('Specially KaylaFace.)

Just don't touch nuthin'.

Sounds icky.

So Am I A Virgin?

2006-12-06T08:01:00.000-05:00

Not that it's a big deal, but I'm curious.

I was surfing a bit yesterday, and encountered a discussion on the subject. It got me wondering. The conversation was ridiculous, so I didn't bother joining in, and I won't bother linking. It really was inane. It revolved around whether Mary (y'know - THE Mary) would have been able to have given birth to Jesus today, given the proliferation of battery operated pleasure machines. Y'know. VIBRATORS.

Anyway, there was this huge idiot fight - not over whether she would have used one, but rather over whether she would have been considered a virgin after having used one. Yes, there are people who would actually fight over such a thing. And they were PISSED at each other. Fundies. Just when you think they couldn't get any more ridiculous. Sounds to me like they should all go to Nicea, have a council, and start a war/crusade over it.

As usual, the conversation continues below the fold...

Anyway, sometimes the morons say really insipid things that provoke a tangential query in my widdle bwain.

Does virginity depend on sexual contact in any form? Penetration? Or is a penis mandatory for non-virginity?

So, you all know that I'm sexually active. Sexually OVERactive probably. Kate and I have poked, prodded, and explored each other's bodies rather thoroughly. There's plenty of video, and not a few stills to prove it. But since she's a girl, does that count?

Just yesterday, Kate brought home a new... um... toy. We now have a small collection going, if you really must know. (and I'm quite sure you MUST!) But since that's mechanical, does THAT count?

I haven't known a man in the biblical sense yet. I certainly will, when I come across one I like enough (pardon the pun).

Which brings up another question. What about "adultery"? Is it adultery if we bring a man into our bed together? I can't see how that would be "cheating" per se, seeing as how Kate and I are both there.

What if only one of us is there, but with the full knowledge and consent of the other? It's still not cheating, but is it adultery?

Not that I really give a crap either way, I'm just wonderin' whether I would be stoned for it because it's adultery or stoned for it because it's good clean fornication.

End Of Ze World

2006-12-03T12:36:00.000-05:00

This is too funny.

Full page flash version is here, youtube version below the fold.

Shakespeare Has Something To Say

2006-12-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

So the pup is driving me nuts while I surf. I suppose it's only fair to let him say something.

His eloquence can be enjoyed below the fold.

a2e4qQZAw4 weweaejhhhhjuny6u7h8uhyhui['l;ouih7

Well said, Shakespeare. (Can anyone here translate doggie typing?)

Wiccans Win Some Equality From Uncle Sam

2006-12-03T09:32:00.000-05:00

From this morning's Daily News, we learn that Roberta Stewart has finally won the right to place a Wiccan symbol on her husband's grave.

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan saw a Wiccan symbol placed on a memorial plaque for her husband Saturday, after fighting the federal government for more than a year over the emblem.

Roberta Stewart, widow of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, and Wiccan leaders said it was the first government-issued memorial plaque with a Wiccan pentacle - a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle. More than 50 friends and family dedicated the plaque at Northern Nevada Veterans Cemetery, about 30 miles east of Reno.

They praised Gov. Kenny Guinn for his role in getting the Nevada Office of Veterans Services to issue the plaque in September. The agency cited its jurisdiction over maintenance of the state cemetery.

Kudos to the Nevada Office of Veterans Services for finally pulling their collective heads out of their collective duffle bags.

It's a win for the establishment clause, and a win against religious discrimination. If Uncle Sam is going to recognize one, he needs to recognize them all. I know that will piss off the fundies who think that only their religion should get recognized, but that only sweetens the win.

The DoD is still not on board, however.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes more than 30 symbols, including more than a dozen variations of the Christian cross and the atomic whirl used by atheists, but not the pentacle.

VA officials have said they are rewriting rules for approving emblems, but the process requires a public comment period.

Last month, Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the VA on behalf of Stewart and others for its refusal to include the Wiccan emblem.

"Our people are on the front line in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's not right they're not getting equal treatment," said the Rev. Selena Fox, one of the Wiccan organizers of the event.

About 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics. Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves "white" or good witches, pagans or neo-pagans.

Stewart and four other soldiers died Sept. 25, 2005, when their Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.

Look, let's be honest. There is exactly one reason why this is even an issue. Fundy Christians think Wiccans are Satan worshippers and should be burned at the stake. Truth is, most Wiccans don't even believe in Satan as far as I can tell.

Wicca is a religion that's all about embracing the planet we live on. They're nature worshipers, and they seem to practice their religion by having lots of indiscriminate sex outside. I'm pretty OK with that. It's all about the Peace, Love, Joy, and Togetherness thing. I'm REALLY REALLY OK with that.

Go Tree Huggers! - gimme some o' that old time Sex-Magick!

As The NSTA Turns Inconveniently

2006-12-03T06:51:00.000-05:00

Remember a few days ago, when we were discussing the National Science Teahers of America thing?

The long and the short of it is that the producers of the movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's movie about global warming, wanted to donate a gazillion copies of the movie for the NSTA to distribute. The NSTA turned them down, and one of their reasons was that they didn't want to piss off the folks who give them money. One of those folks is Exxon, which obviously has a vested interest in not having that movie seen.

Laurie David, one of the producers wrote an op-ed about it, and got us all pissed off about the situation. Then the NSTA wrote a response, which made us all feel a little better. Then the NSTA altered its response, which left us all a little confused, and a bit suspicious.

If you're still following this, the online version of the journal Science weighs in on the discussion....

Mother And Daughter Lesbos Bathing Together

2006-12-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

You know I should collect google searches that lead people to UDoJ, like Matt does at Pooflingers, and then post them each month.

Here's the latest one, and it's at least the second time this exact search has led someone here.

Mother And Daughter Lesbos Bathing Together

The really funny part is the IP host this person was using....
hc25.jesus.ox.ac.uk

Gotta love that. It's not what you might at first think, but it's funny nonetheless.

(And for the record, note that we're the first result in that search. Just so y'know.)

Random Reading

2006-12-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

I'm swiping this from Robyn's blog*.

It's an interesting meme...

1. grab the nearest book. no cheating! the nearest book.
2. open the book to page 123.
3. find the fifth sentence
4. post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. don't you dare dig for a cool or intellectual book on your shelf. pick out whatever is closest!

My answer below the fold.

"I am treating a mother as a machine programmed to do everything in its power to propagate copies of the genes which ride inside it. Since you and I are humans who know what it is like to have conscious purposes, it is convenient for me to use the language of purpose as a metaphor in explaining the behavior of survival machines.

In practice, what would it mean to say a mother had a favourite child? It would mean she would invest her resources unequally among her children."

[I'm editing out the name of the book because originally, you were supposed to guess.]

I'm just bummed I don't happen to be reading some trashy semi-porn romance novel at the moment, with little literary merit and lots of graphic and gratuitous sex.

*(Robyn says she got it from Somewhat Refined, and Molly got it from Northern Light, and AK FNP got it from Fat Doctor, who got it from Bardiac, who got it from Reassigned Time, and Dr. Crazy got it from Anastasia, who doesn't mention where she got it.

Just so y'know.)

--------------------

Here's a picture of my great great great grandfather, Jonas. Jonas was born in 1850, in Denholme, in the Parish of Bradford, which is in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He died in Philadelphia in 1930.

What does Grandpa Jonas have to do with my book? Nothing at all, but if you mouse over his picture, I've put the title in the "title" tag of his picture.

Now you can guess, or just find out the answer. How's that?

It's St. Andrew's Day

2006-11-30T08:01:00.000-05:00

Be sure to go celebrate with Old Bitter Balls, the truest Scotsman of the Web.

The beginning of his self-description: "I'm a witty fucker, a base and vile brabbler; I never know when to quit, I'm a terrier. The conscience of the people, a gob in the eye of convention,an equal opportunities offender."

My kinda man.

[UPDATE - Old Bitter Balls has graced me with what has got the be the funniest shiite I've read all week....]

Matt LeClair Update

2006-11-29T18:25:00.000-05:00

Matt LeClair update, at Jews On First.

Matt was the student who busted that fundy teacher preaching in History class about how dinosaurs were on the ark, and if a student didn't believe in Jesus, she deserved to go to Hell. She's a Muslim.

Alas, poor Matt is catching crap from the majority of townsfolk, and the teacher is still teaching, and the superintendant has done nothing.

This quote from Matt seems to sum up the situation:

Matthew LaClair said he reproached the school superintendent, Robert Mooney, saying "I thought when I gave this information to you, it would be handled by an adult, I guess I was wrong."

Hat tip to Ed, Dispatches From the Culture Wars.

And via PZ at Pharyngula, here's a link to the audio Matt made, in .mp3 format.

What's Your Seduction Style?

2006-11-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

So I just took a test. "What's your secuction style?"

Results below the fold.

Then it says "You need the Sinner Guide". Hell, I wrote it.

Anyways, clicking on that brings up some pictures in the handbook, each with a caption...

A Pentagram - "Place on front door, bedpost, forehead, anywhere that you want to say 'Hey, I'm evil'."

A flask - "Lighten the mood or dull the shame. Real hedonists keep a steady supply of booze on their person at all times."

Handcuffs - "Use these to exercise restraint, or as a conversation piece on your desk at work. Coworkers love it when you rattle these and wink at them."

Naked Photos of Self - "Give these to people you might want to have sex with. Slutty is the new black."

Scissors - "Oh the uses are manifold. Make sure to run with them because you're bad."

Extra set of keys - "Place in fishbowl. Wait for stranger to retrieve them."

Carmen Sandiego and Rockappella

2006-11-29T09:16:00.000-05:00

For all both of you on earth who may not be familiar with Carmen Sandiego, or the late, great, Lynne Thigpen.

Sorry I couldn't find a better copy of the final title theme, but hey, it's better than nuthin'.

And a pretty cool video featuring Lost's Kate Austin and Rockappella's Carmen theme song.

And if you want to sing along (and how could you NOT?), here's the lyrics...

Well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina,
She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize,
She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to China,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Steal their Seoul in South Korea, make Antarctica cry Uncle,
From the Red Sea to Greenland they'll be singing the blues,
Well they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the jungle,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

She go from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe,
Chicago to Czechoslovakia and back!

Well she'll ransack Pakistan and run a scam in Scandinavia,
Then she'll stick 'em up Down Under and go pick-pocket Perth,
She put the Miss in misdemeanor when she stole the beans from Lima,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Oh tell me where in the world is... Oh tell me where can she be?

Ooh, Botswana to Thailand, Milan via Amsterdam,
Mali to Bali, Ohio, Oahu...!

Well she glides around the globe and she'll flimflam every nation,
She's a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery,
Her itinerary's loaded up with moving violations,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

My kind of girl.

Where In The World Is Aunt Tara?

2006-11-29T07:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, Tara isn't really my Aunt, but I've sort of come to think of her that way. But the important thing here is that she seems to have pulled a Carmen Sandiego.

Now, Tara is often busy with actual work, and doesn't post every single day. Lord knows there are lots of cows out there who need their butts explored. Umm... that didn't come out exactly right.

Anything else I say about that is just going to make it worse, so for the full story on that, maybe you should just check out Tara's post.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Aunt Tara, as I've come to think of her, last posted on the 19^th. She did mention that she would be visiting family for the week, without good web access, and that the University was not having classes for the following week. Ok, so we have to go without our Aetiology fix for a week. Tough, but we can do it.

It's now Tuesday of the week following the following week, and still no word from Aunt Tara. I'm sure she's fine, and I can live an extra few days without my fix, but I'm just an eeensy weensy bit concerned.

DT (Dr. Tara), PHONE HOME!

Still No Love From The WordPress Importer

2006-11-28T09:38:00.000-05:00

I've tried and tried, but can't seem to figure out why it won't import this blog.

It's a setting, or part of the code, or something. I'll keep trying, but I'm getting pretty frustrated.

I don't want to make the primary move to our Wordpress Blog until I can move all this good stuff over there.

Help!

National Science Teachers of Exxon

2006-11-28T09:27:00.000-05:00

[SECOND EDIT - The portions crossed out are now missing from the current version of the NSTA's response...]

[EDIT: Via a comment made anonymously from Ft. Worth, Texas, I am including the NSTA's official response first, which can be found in their pressroom. -

NSTA Press Release
NSTA Statement on November 26 Washington Post Op-ed "Science à la Joe Camel"
Nov 28 2006

On November 26, the Washington Post printed an opinion piece from environmental activist Laurie David, a producer of the film "An Inconvenient Truth." In her op-ed Ms. David reports that NSTA rejected the opportunity to distribute 50,000 copies of the DVD to NSTA members.

NSTA policy states that the association cannot endorse any outside organization's products and/or messages to its members. Therefore, we do not send any such products and/or messages directly to our members, regardless of the source.

What was not mentioned in the op-ed is the fact that during conversations with Ms. David's representative we suggested making the DVD available via alternative means of distribution (e.g. by providing a mailing list of our members to producers, announcing its availability in our publications, etc.). It appears that these alternative distribution mechanisms were unsatisfactory.

It was not the intent of the NSTA to restrict "An Inconvenient Truth" from its members and we are currently pursuing options to make the DVD available to teachers.

In the op-ed Ms. David goes on to characterize NSTA as a willing corporate America partner that eagerly pushes corporate messages about the environment.

This is not true.

The perception created by the op-ed that NSTA has a conflict of interest in dealing with corporate America is misleading. This is a very serious issue to NSTA and science education. Like many organizations, NSTA does receive support from corporate America and other organizations (in FY06 total corporate support received by NSTA was 16.4% and total support from energy companies was 3.77%). Before we accept any funds from outside groups (corporate or otherwise), and as a condition of any support, we make it clear that NSTA is solely responsible for developing, directing, and implementing the programs we offer to teachers.

Let me specifically address the programs outlined in the op-ed: ExxonMobil has been a long-time sponsor of the national network we call Building a Presence for Science. In this project we have identified a "point of contact" for science in over 40,000 school buildings. Originally conceived to provide a copy of the National Science Education Standards to each school, NSTA now regularly sends these points of contact useful information on science education that they share with teachers in their buildings. Not once has ExxonMobil asked to use this network for their own purposes.

The Shell Oil Company funds national research science experts to present at our national conference, where they speak directly to science teachers about their field of research. NSTA chooses the scientists, invites the scientists, and hosts the scientists at these conferences. In addition, the Shell Oil Company sponsors the Shell Science Teaching award for K-12 science teachers who have had a positive impact on his or her students, school, and community through exemplary classroom teaching. This award program is administered by NSTA and the recipients are chosen by science teachers selected by NSTA.

The partnership with API, which ended 5 years ago, led to the creation of a simulation, done entirely by NSTA, on energy usage. The video in question, "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel" was not on our website. ~~The only record of NSTA distributing it to members we found was from 1999, prior to the current endorsement policy.~~

Global warming is a very important science/societal issue. NSTA has always supported sound environmental science education. We regret this current controversy surrounding our decision not to mass distribute the DVD to our members, and we are working to promote the availability of the film.

In response to an October 2005 report titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a strong consensus is emerging in the business, education, and scientific communities that our nation's future competitiveness in the global marketplace is directly tied to the ability of our schools to better prepare children in mathematics and the sciences. We should be discussing positive ways of how we can work together to strengthen the science education we provide to our nation's students.

The mission of the NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all, and for over 50 years NSTA has been a staunch supporter of quality science education. We are very proud of the work we do on behalf of science education.

Dr. Gerald Wheeler
Executive Director
National Science Teachers Association

Thank you for that, anonymous. It certainly sheds a different light on things. Please do come back and accept my thanks for that.]

------

Via Coturnix, comes this very disturbing news...

It appears as though the National Science Teachers Association has abandoned its search for truth and is now looking for a good sugar daddy.

Laurie David, one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, wrote a piece for today's Washington Post describing her efforts to make 50,000 DVD copies of that movie available to America's science teachers through NSTA.

They said no. And, more weirdly, they explained why. First, they said, they were afraid that if they started taking information from "special interests" like David, they'd have to take them from other groups, too. As though a private organization is obligated to accept and distribute any fool thing the Flat Earth Society may send them? As though they're not scientists, capable of sussing out the factual truth and relative educational value of any given piece of would-be curriculum? As though (as David points out) An Inconvenient Truth isn't already part of the required science curriculum in other countries, including Sweden and Norway?

Where Have I Been?

2006-11-28T09:25:00.000-05:00

Setting up my new computer, actually. Kate braved the insanity on Friday to pick me up a new computer. She rocks my world!

So here's where I've ended up computationally speaking...

Since my old desktop was sort of pieced together from scratch, what I had was a 1.2 ghz processor, 120 g hard drive, a DVD RW drive, a monster 17" monitor, etc. etc.

Grabbing the best of my old computer and jamming it into my new computer, I now have 200 gigs of hard drive space, a 3.2 ghz processor, a flat LCD monitor (only 15", but still way better than the huge ass monster that used to occupy most of my desk) and a DVD rom/ CDRW in addition to the DVD writer from the old beast.

The internal fans are much quiter, too. The XP Media Center Edition came preloaded, and I get a free upgrade to Vista when it eventually comes out. I don't know if I'll switch my OS right away, though, given Microsoft's penchant for beta testing its crap on an unsuspecting world. We'll see.

I'm still re-installing software that I have loaded on the old hard drive, since a bunch of it won't run now that the old hard drive is the F drive and not the C drive.

I'm keeping the old keyboard. I've been using the new one, but I don't like it, and neither does Kate.

I think I'll pick up a little hard drive and a copy of XP Home to load on it, and give the old dinosaur to Aunt Helen. She's been after Cousin Bob for a while to get her set up with a computer, but he's stuck on the idea of getting her the latest, greatest, biggest, baddest system on the market. She's nearly 70, and just wants to be able to email and scan pictures and stuff. She doesn't need to spend 3K on a computer.

I'll be the favorite for a very long time, I think. Of course, that means I volunteer to be tech support, which I'm not so thrilled with, but for Aunt Helen, I'll do it.

Aunt Helen rocks.

Oh, and I've also been reading "The Selfish Gene" in my spare time. I'm on like page 3. (I'm a busy girl, whattdya want?)

Tarheel Tavern

2006-11-28T09:20:00.000-05:00

The Tarheel Tavern is a NC blog carnival, which I came across via Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock.

The latest is up at Slowly She Turned.

Check it out.

The President Owes Me An Irony Meter

2006-11-28T07:47:00.000-05:00

So on an early morning errand this morning, I was listening in my car to Morning Edition, on NPR. The Prez is in Estonia, and is of course getting peppered with questions about Iraq like so many pellets from Dick Cheney's 12 gauge.

The response in question is below the fold to protect the innocent and those with less than industrial strength irony meters...

This is quoted from memory once I got back to the house, so it may not be perfect, but it's pretty close.

"If Iran is going to be involved in Iraq, they should be involved in a constructive way, working for peace." - Dubya

Crap. Do you know how expensive an in-dash irony meter with auto-updated overload protection, Dolby 5.1 surround sound and digital LCD equalizer is? That sucker even had TIVO and XM satellite radio built in.

The Thanksgiving Debacle

2006-11-24T12:32:00.000-05:00

Wherein The Disembodied Telic Entity really tries to wreck the holiday, but Aunt Helen subdues the Evil One.

So I mentioned that Thanksgiving wasn't going well for us. My Grand-Aunt saved the day, but it was nearly a disaster.

[Cue wavy video with descending audio scale transition to flashback to Thanksgiving Eve....]

First, I baked the first apple pie, and then threw the turkey in, thinking I'd bake the splenda pie when the turkey was done. Forgetting, of course, that the turkey was an all night, right-up-til-dinner thing.

No prob, I'd have the pie ready and waiting to go in as soon as the turkey was done, and it could bake while everyone was eating (it takes 50 minutes).

In the morning, Kate says to me, "Hey, did you know your pie is hard as a rock?"

Sure enough, I poke the crust and it's like steel. Break-your-teeth-on-it kind of hard.

Crap.

Forgot to butter the crust before it went in the oven. I'm a little rusty, since I really haven't been doing any baking in several months.

Ok, no prob, I'll toss it and make two pies and bake them both while everyone is eating.

Just then, BANG!

There's some kind of small explosion in the oven. Big enough that the oven door blew open a little.

WTF?

I look in, and the lid to the turkey pan, which is pyrex and was made to be and has been used in the oven half a dozen times before, is nothing but the metal frame. The fracking thing had shattered. All over the turkey.

I'm in tears, just hysterical. Now we had planned to go to Aunt Helen's anyway because her dinner was going to be around 1, but we were going to have our own big dinner later because it's our first since we bought the house, and we wanted to have our first Thanksgiving in OUR house, y'know?

Problem with just going to Aunt Helen's is that there is a young Marine fella living next door whose wife is bi-polar and just left him to go back to her family in Seattle, and he's left here all alone with his two year old daughter. The guy's helpless. He can barely cook a hot-dog. We had invited him to have Thanksgiving with us, because we feel so bad for him. He's a little off, and like I said, helpless, but he's a good kid.

Aunt Helen's met him a few times at our cook-outs, but we could hardly just invite him over to someone else's house.

Fortunately, Aunt Helen has a soft-spot for Marines, having been one herself back in the late 50's. (She was discharged after about 6 months because she got pregnant. They really used to do that!)

Kate drove over to talk to her about it, and of course I'm further upset because I'm feeling like she bailed on me in my hour of need.

Anyway, Aunt Helen says it's OK, and she would have invited him anyway if we weren't having our own dinner, and eventually I calm down and all is well. We had made so much stuff, that we had to take my car over with Dave (the neighbor), his daughter, and me, while Kate took her car, loaded down with food.

Of course, Aunt Helen has her three kids, their spouses, and her two grandsons and one grand-spouse, along with Uncle Luis (Aunt Helen's ex-husband) and has more than enough food to feed us all without our food. I think we could have fed an entire batallion of Marines with just the left-overs.

It's all good now, but it was quite the mess at the time.

I'm glad it's over.

Hope yours was less stressful.

Happy Thanksgiving, Dreamers!

2006-11-23T08:43:00.000-05:00

Quit reading this blog, go eat lots of food, drink lots of wine, enjoy lots of family company.

And take just one little minute
To Dream A Little Dream Of Me.

Kisses!

Splenda Just Pissed Me Off

2006-11-23T08:22:00.000-05:00

Who the hell knew about this and didn't tell me? Which one of you thought this was the Bush Administration, and decided that reality should never reach my ears? Whoever you are, you're fired.

Blipey tipped me off to this....

Apparently, Splenda is NOT made with sugar.

This story ran on my birthday in 2005...

(AP) Sugar growers and consumer groups want the government to investigate advertising claims by the makers of the sugar substitute Splenda.

They say the slogan "Made from Sugar" is misleading. The head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says "made from chlorinated hydrocarbons" would be more accurate. Michael Jacobson says McNeil Nutritionals -- part of Johnson and Johnson -- is trying to confuse consumers into thinking they're using an all-natural sweetener.

The president of the Sugar Association says Splenda is nothing more than a "highly processed chemical compound made in a factory."

But a McNeil spokeswoman says sugar is indeed used to make one of the ingredients in Splenda. And she says Splenda's manufacturer has filed court papers against the Sugar Association itself -- for claims it's made against Splenda.

CRAP CRAP CRAP.

I hate aspartame, I hate saccharin. They both really crap up a recipe. My Greand Aunt Helen is diabetic, so when I discovered sucralose, and found out how much easier it is to mask the switch, I was tickled.

WHO THE HELL GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO MISLEAD ME ABOUT WHAT IT REALLY IS, THOUGH?

Anyways, Splenda won a dismissal hearing just a few weeks ago in the lawsuit that they had brought against the sugar manufacturers.....

Article Date: 23 Oct 2006 - 0:00am (PST)

The U.S. District Court (Central District) of California yesterday denied the Sugar Association's motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, on behalf of its SPLENDA^® (sucralose) Sweeteners products.

The lawsuit, which will be heard by the District Court, charges the Sugar Association and several of its member companies with false advertising designed to mislead consumers about the safety and taste of SPLENDA^® Sweeteners. According to the suit, the Sugar Association has been seeking to boost sales of sugar by spreading false and misleading information about SPLENDA^® Sweeteners via the internet and through other public relations channels.

The lawsuit states the multi-million dollar competitive campaign by the Sugar Association on behalf the Sugar Companies intends to cause material commercial injury to SPLENDA^® Sweeteners.

SPLENDA^® Brand Sweetener (sucralose), the sweetening ingredient in all SPLENDA^® Sweeteners, is made through a patented, multi-step process that starts with sugar and converts it to a no calorie, non-carbohydrate sweetener. The result is an exceptionally stable sweetener that tastes like sugar, but without sugar's calories. Recent clinical data suggests that SPLENDA^® No Calorie Sweetener can be a helpful tool for children and families to use as part of a program to reduce calories and increase physical activity, in order to prevent additional weight gain in overweight children.

SPLENDA^® Sweeteners have been used safely by millions of consumers in all population groups worldwide, including pregnant women, children and individuals with diabetes. SPLENDA^® Brand Sweetener (sucralose) was first sold more than 13 years ago and is now permitted for use in over 80 countries.

About SPLENDA^® Brand Sweetener

SPLENDA^® Sweeteners are marketed by McNeil Nutritionals, LLC. SPLENDA^® Brand Sweetener is used in more than 4,000 products of major food brands worldwide. You can find out more about SPLENDA^® Sweeteners or get recipes and tips on cooking and baking with the brand by logging on to http://www.splenda.com.

About McNeil Nutritionals, LLC

McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, is a marketer of innovative nutritional products. The company's mission is to give people the ability to actively manage their own health. McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, markets SPLENDA^® No Calorie Sweetener, SPLENDA^® Sugar Blend, SPLENDA^® Brown Sugar Blend, VIACTIV^® Calcium Soft Chews, VIACTIV^® Multi-Vitamin Soft Chews, LACTAID^® Milk and Dietary Supplements and BENECOL^® Spreads. McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, is headquartered in Fort Washington, PA.

There is apparently a great deal of suit/countersuit, which will take a while to unravel. It's Thanksgiving, so I've got other things to do. Maybe tomorrow...

It Is On

2006-11-22T22:01:00.000-05:00

The oven, that is. And it'll probably not stop until January 2^nd or 3^rd. I've done a peanut butter pie, the coleslaw (neither of which require the oven, of course), and just pulled the first apple pie out of the oven. The turkey goes in next.

Oh, and by the way. I am the Goddess of pie. My pie is to die for.

Oh, and I bake, too.

HAHAHAHAHA!

My apple pie really IS to die for. It's home made from scratch - including the crust. And I even do a Splenda varient for my diabetic Grand Aunt, and usually it gets scarfed just as fast as the regular one, because nobody can tell which is which.

Dudes, I ROCK the kitchen.

And I can cook pretty well, too!

Kisses!

"Own Goal" O'Leary Strikes Again

2006-11-22T10:12:00.000-05:00

I just want to echo The Boy's comment from AtBC -

From Uncommonly Dense....

O'Leary // Nov 22nd 2006 at 7:26 am

Esssentially, the Darwinists cannot find enough fundie whackos to discredit the idea of design in nature, so they are compelled to impersonate them.

In addition to the humorous appellation he hangs on MorphoDyke, I agree with The Boy (not as frequent an occurance as you might suspect).

MorphoDyke just pointed the finger right at her whole movement and called them "fundie whackos".

That's friggin' hilarious!

To Whoever Gets To "Review" My Blog

2006-11-22T01:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I was stripping the blog down to try to get Wordpress to import my blog over there (BECAUSE BLOGGER IS DOWN ALL THE DAMNED TIME) and I republished several times trying to get it to work (BECAUSE EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND BLOGGER IS DOWN AGAIN) and apparently I tripped some sort of filter trying to catch spam blogs.

(HAVE YOU EVER TRIED SURFING THE NEXT BLOG BUTTON ON THE STUPID THING AT THE TOP OF A BLOGGER PAGE? HALF THE DAMNED BLOGS ON BLOGGER ARE SPAM BLOGS, BUT YOU'RE GOING TO BUST MY ASS?) Try http://fictionado.blogspot.com/ Or this guy who pops up all the damned time... http://firmata.blogspot.com/ That fucker's really annoying. Go bother him. THAT'S WHAT A SPAM BLOG LOOKS LIKE. And how, pray tell, did I get to this site from the nav bar? http://www.topsearch10.com/search.php?said=spot801&aid=54159&q=directtv

So now I have to do the word verification thing until somebody at Blogger (WHICH SUCKS ASS BECAUSE IT'S DOWN ALL THE DAMNED TIME) comes to personally review my blog (WHICH IS ON BLOGGER, WHICH IS ALWAYS CRASHING) to determine if my blog is a spam blog.

So this little note is for you, mister review guy.

BLOGGER IS DOWN ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME, WHICH IS WHY I'M LEAVING BLOGGER, WHICH IS WHY I WAS WORKING ON MY BLOG, WHICH IS WHY I HAD TO KEEP REPUBLISHING MY BLOG.

Just so y'know.

[UPDATE: I got an email from Blogger - it's below the fold.]

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

I notice they didn't mention this post....

Blog Work Announcement

2006-11-22T00:29:00.000-05:00

I'm working on the blog, so it's temporarily stripped down. Things will revert to normal a little later this morning....

Kisses to you all, and thanks for your patience...

[UPDATE: OK, all done]

The Blogosphere Hates Me.

2006-11-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

So now Blogger is up, but our Wordpress site is down. It's just our blog, though, as far as I can tell. Blipey's site is fine.

Some days it just don't pay to get out of bed.

[UPDATE: OK, it's fixed. As one might suspect, I was the culprit. I broke it playing with the video embedder thingy.]

In Honor of 10,000

2006-11-21T17:16:00.000-05:00

Well, today we got our 10,000th visit here at UDoJ. Unfortunately, I couldn’t post about it because Blogger was down AGAIN. That’s it, I’ve had it, we’re done, we’re moving. It won’t be today, and this may not be the final address (we may choose to get our own domain or something), but the decision to ditch Blogger is final.

Blogger sucks ass, and we’re gone.

Thanks for all 10,000. Let's go for 10,000 MORE!

Oh, but here’s our 10,000^th visitor, from Philly (which is kinda cool since that’s where The Boy grew up).

UDreamOfJanie
Who’s On? > Visit Detail
Visit 10,000
IP Address xx.xx.xxx.#
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Pennsylvania
City : Philadelphia
Lat/Long : 39.9968, -75.1485 (Map)
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Javascript version 1.5
Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Nov 21 2006 3:29:23 pm

Visit Length 0 seconds

Referring URL http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/

Visit Exit Page http://udoj.blogspot.com/

Time Zone UTC-5:00

Visit Number 10,000

My Grandfather's Brush with History

2006-11-21T12:17:00.000-05:00

Over at Dispatches, Ed writes eloquently about the history of separation of church and state. Along the way, he mentions a fella by the name of Roger Williams, one of the founders of Rhode Island.

Allow me to quote Ed...

Notice how he pretends that the situation for Roger Williams was only that the government was violating his religious freedom; he does so because folks like him like to pretend that separation of church and state only means the church is protected from state intervention. But the reality, as demonstrated perfectly by the Roger Williams situation, is that separation requires both. The reason why Williams' religious freedom was restricted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was because that colony was controlled by the Puritans, who rejected any notion of separation of church and state.

The Mass Bay Colony was a theocracy, ruled by Puritans. They used the Mosaic law as the civil and criminal law for the colony and they were ruled over by religious leaders. Anyone preaching anything contrary to their narrow theology was imprisoned, deported or killed. Williams was about to be deported when he fled the colony and settled in what is now Rhode Island, starting the Providence Colony. He was not alone. Quakers, Baptists and other non-Puritan Christians also found themselves jailed in Massachusetts for having the wrong theological interpretations of the Bible.

Williams clearly understood that religious freedom demanded both freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion - that is, from the imposition of someone else's religion. So in contrast to the false impllcation here, Williams' case demonstrates perfectly the necessity of keeping the church from controlling the state and destroying the religious freedom of all who are not members of that church.

What does this have to do with me? I'll tell you below the fold.

Williams was not alone in his founding of the new colony. There were 53 other proprietors who first settled Rhode Island, and among them was William Arnold, both father of the three time governor of Rhode Island, Benedict Arnold, and Great Great Grandfather of the now imfamous traitor to the American Revolution Benedict Arnold. (Note: The story of General Arnold is not quite as cut and dry as American children are led to believe and though he was definitely in the wrong, the full story is worth your consideration. It is in fact, the story of how one of the greatest patriots of the Revolution could be driven to treason, by the deaf ears of the Continental Congress, out of concern for his men, and for the love of his young bride. It's a tale of heroism, romance, suspense, deception, treason and tragedy worthy of the pen of The Bard.)

But William also had amongst his children a daughter, Elizabeth Peake Arnold, who married the Reverend William Carpenter. Turns out that William and Elizabeth (Arnold) Carpenter were my 12^th Great Grandparents, and William Arnold my 13^th Great Grandfather.

In my family there is a strong tradition of belief in keeping the state out of the affairs of the church, and the church out of the affairs of the state. I hope and believe that we do my forefathers proud.

Just so y'know.

Dreamers' Poetry Contest

2006-11-21T11:23:00.000-05:00

So I made a comment over at Cocktail Party Physics, which sounded like a really good ending for a poem. I thought about writing one myself, and then I thought I'd like to see what you guys could do.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is below the fold.

Write a poem. Here is your ending, adapted from the title of a Robert Heinlein story:

Oh how I long to long,
For the green, green hills of earth.

Have at it, and post your poems here.

We'll post them all and have a vote, the winner will get a guest post on whatever subject the winner chooses.

Hey Look!

2006-11-20T10:29:00.000-05:00

We're famous!

Ok all you regular Dreamers, I guess I can disclose my patron's name...

Ed Brayton, whose idea I ran with on the Priceless video, has very kindly posted it at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and even gave us a plug!

Ed thought up the video, with the backdrop of the Mastercard commercial, and the script. I just stuck some images and sound to it. It's really his baby.

I'll have to discuss the whole credit thing with The Boy (For those of you who don't know, that's Lou). He apparently forgets who's in charge around here sometimes...

:)

It was a group effort though, so we'll let The Boy (Lou) slide on this one. But just because he's in charge of the body, doesn't mean he's in charge of the brain.

Just so y'know.

[UPDATE as of 8PM:

Honors for This Video:
#94 - Top Rated (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#41 - Most Viewed (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#88 - Top Favorites (Today) - Science & Technology - All

Honors for This Video:
#96 - Top Rated (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#25 - Most Viewed (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#17 - Most Viewed (Today) - Science & Technology - English
#88 - Top Favorites (Today) - Science & Technology - All

]

[UPDATE as of 9:30PM:

Honors for This Video:
#67 - Top Rated (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#20 - Most Viewed (Today) - Science & Technology - All
#16 - Most Viewed (Today) - Science & Technology - English
#79 - Top Favorites (Today) - Science & Technology - All

Not that that's earth shattering, but it's still kinda cool.

Of course, we have Ed to thank for the wider dissemination of this video.

Cocktail Party Physics

2006-11-19T09:40:00.000-05:00

I just bumped into a really terrific blog. Hat tip to the always interesting, ever lovely Dr. Tara, who posted about Jennifer's impending marriage.

Take a minute and check out Cocktail Party Physics.

OOOO! She has a fictional companion, too! But hey, she's trying to horn in on my prey! Eh, we like her anyway.

Jennifer's bio, from her About page is below the fold:

"Biography

I'm a former English major turned science writer, through serendipitous accident: I stumbled into writing about physics, drifted further and further into the field, then woke up one day and exclaimed, "Hey! I'm a science writer!" It was a life-changing epiphany. You know how people look for love by making a list of everything they desire in a mate, and then fall for someone who has NONE of those traits? That's my career in a nutshell. Sometimes there's a disconnnect between what we think we want, and what we actually need to be fulfilled. Science writing turned out to be the perfect gig for me, and I've been avidly exploring my inner geek ever since.

Over the years, I've built up some respectable "street cred," having written extensively for the science trade press, and, increasingly, for the general public in such venues as Discover magazine and Salon. I've covered the acoustics of Mayan pyramids and NYC subways, the physics of foam, optics and art, and the precarious pitfalls of pseudoscience, among other colorful topics.

I'm also the proud author of two books for the general public: Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics (published in January 2006) and the forthcoming (and self-explanatory) The Physics of the Buffyverse (due out January 2007), both through Penguin. Check out my official Web site for more information.

Because I came to science writing through the backdoor, I learned about physics via firsthand experience and interactions with the scientists themselves. So for me, the entire profession is a very human endeavor, with a rich history filled with colorfully quirky personalities.

I relish the challenge of sharing the continually unfolding story of physics with those like my former physics-phobic self, who quail at the first sight of a mathematical equation and prefer, say, Stephen King to Stephen Hawking. If I can make it fun, funky, unconventional, and blur the lines between traditional disciplines -- both within the sciences themselves, and science and the arts/pop culture -- so much the better. We need fewer barriers and more bridges in this world.

After many years in New York City, I'm now based in Washington DC, sharing my modest space with a small tabby cat named Clio. I share my blog space with avatar/alter-ego (some might say Evil Twin) Jen-Luc Piquant, the tres chic hostess who presides over Cocktail Party Physics with a suitably jaundiced eye and cool panache. For those brave enough to join the party, we salute you!"

Congratulations on the engagement, Jennifer!

The Buckingham Remix

2006-11-18T16:55:00.000-05:00

I thought someone might like just the Bill Buckingham Creationism Remix I did for the Priceless video.

Priceless.

2006-11-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

A video project about Dover. It's about a minute long and even has sound (after about 10 seconds).

~~[UPDATE: Now Version 2.0]~~
[UPDATE: The Director's Cut is now up!]

(And of course all our videos can be found at Channel UDoJ on YouTube.

I Need A Video Clip

2006-11-18T08:27:00.000-05:00

This is very, very important, and any help would be appreciated. I'm working on a little project for a friend you all know....

It's super duper top secret, though.

I'll be sure to post the final result here when the project is ready to go public, of course.

The clip I need is from when Bill Buckingham was on Fox 43 blowing ID's cover in Dover.

Remember when he got busted on the stand with the TV interview? Remember how he was yacking about wanting an alternative to Darwin, like Creationism?

Yeah, that's the clip I want. I can't seem to come up with the right combination of search terms to find it. Anyone got a link to the video somewhere?

Thirty Four Pounds

2006-11-17T14:44:00.000-05:00

Shakespeare went to the vet today.

Yep, we got him in September, and he was like 12 pounds. Now he's 34. He got his last distemper/parvo vaccine for a year, and we made an appointment for January to uh.... y'know.

(He's reading over my shoulder so I don't want to mention the whole N-U-T-L-E-S-S thing. Good thing he can't spell.)

:)

Even Dubya Can't Tell The Difference

2006-11-17T06:55:00.000-05:00

On CNN's front page is this headline

Bush talks Iraq in Vietnam

It's followed by this line...

President Bush, in Vietnam, said today that the United States' unsuccessful war there three decades ago offered lessons for the American-led struggle in Iraq. "We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said shortly after arriving in the one-time war capital, Hanoi.

(The rest of the story...)

Ironic, no? The Vietnam war may offer lessons, but apparently he didn't bother learning them. At least he was paying attention... sort of.

"Laura and I were talking about how amazing it is that we're here in Vietnam," the president said.

The rest of us still find it amazing that you're there in the White House.

The American people "want to know if we have a plan for success. I assured John that any reposition of troops -- if that's what we do -- will be done with John and his government. But I assured him, we're not leaving until this job is done, until Iraq can sustain and defend itself."

Wait. Last I heard, we never had a policy of "Stay The Course". Who the hell is in charge of getting out the memos? How am I supposed to remember if we're at war with Oceana, IF I CAN'T GET THE MEMOS?????

Crap.

2006-11-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

I've been fooling around with wordpress....

And after failing to import all my posts and comments into wordpress, I discovered that wordpress has removed all the line breaks from all my posts.

Sunuvabitch.

Shakespeare Steals Home

2006-11-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

I'd give anything to have had this on video...

So I just had the pup out, but he wasn't happy about coming back in the house from the back yard. I hollered at him a few times, because it was raining, and eventually I gave up and just watched him from inside the storm door. After a minute or two, the rain really picked up, and started raining really really hard. Shakespeare's only been out in the rain a time or two, and only once in a good downpour. He was wiggin' out, hopping around, trying to snap at whatever it was that was getting him all wet. Truly funny stuff.

Finally, he gave up. He suddenly did this incredible speed lap around the whole outside of the back yard, then bolted for all he was worth for the door. I was a little afraid I wouldn't get the door open in time, but I just barely got it open before he would have crashed into it. So through the door he comes like a bat out of hell.

Our back door is from the patio to the garage. The garage has a smooth concrete floor. Dog paws aren't great brakes on smooth concrete floors.

Shakespeare has dog paws.

Way too funny to even express to you all without video.

Fundy Politician Beats Wife, Prays

2006-11-15T18:58:00.000-05:00

Via Pam again....

(How the hell does she do it?)

With a Bible in his hand and looking haggard from two nights behind bars, Rep. Mark Olson, R-Big Lake, walked out of the Sherburne County jail Tuesday seeking forgiveness from his wife, the public and God after being charged with two misdemeanor counts of domestic assault after an incident Sunday at his home.

Olson, 51, who was just elected to his eighth term in the Legislature, stopped short of acknowledging guilt for the charges.

"I have failed terribly in my family affairs. I'm grateful for my wife's strength to speak up. First of all I need God's forgiveness and I need my wife's forgiveness and my family's. Then I need the public's forgiveness and all other officials I've done harm to." Olson was released without bail. He was ordered to stay away from his wife and children and from their home.

(I just wanted to highlight that particular turn of phrase...)

Blogger's On My Last Nerve

2006-11-15T16:31:00.000-05:00

If I weren't so attached to the look and feel of my blog just as it is, I'd bail.

Every damned time I turn around, Blogger's down again. And it always does it when I'm on a roll and generating some traffic. Which of course stops traffic dead. And worse, most of the other Blogs I read are also on Blogger, so I can't even bide my time at those blogs.

It just pisses me off.

There are people out there that actually want to read the Goddamned crap I write, but they can't because Blogger goes down all the freakin' time.

WTF?

I gotta go kick somethin'.

Ain't So Funny Anymore

2006-11-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

I usually get several big laughs from Fundies Say the Darndest Things...

But after watching about 30 seconds of this video, [Warning, turn down your speakers a bit] I gotta tell ya': They ain't so funny anymore. This kind of religion is just plain insanity. And I'll go one step further: pushing it on kids like this should end in arrest for child abuse.

That poor child doesn't stand a chance of being normal or mentally healthy.

Peanut the Woozle

2006-11-15T13:58:00.000-05:00

For those of you not aquainted with Peanut (to whom I referred in this thread at Amused Muse)...

(It's worth six minutes of your life, trust me.)

I kill me.

2006-11-15T12:46:00.000-05:00

Ok, now we're just crackin' ourselves up...

The Sodomy Squadron Strikes Again

2006-11-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

Over where it's always steamin', Pam is crackin' me up.

Y'know, it's freaks like Lou Sheldon that make the U.S. a freaking laughing stock.

From his column...

Pro-Homosexual Democrats To Push Anti-Christian ‘Hate Crime’ Legislation
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition

November 14, 2006 - With the Democrats taking control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives this January, we can expect the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its pro-homosexual surrogates newly elected to Congress, to begin an aggressive push for passage of a “hate crimes” bill designed to provide federally protected status to the behavior of homosexuality. This hate crimes bill is likely to be a re-engineered version of the old Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA). The pro-homosexual, anti-Christian Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is another bill that will be revived as part of the homosexual agenda.

Yes, it's definitely discriminatory to not allow Christians to lynch the homos. America should be ashamed. I mean, REALLY! What's this country coming to when a group of honest, white hooded Chistians can't go out on a Saturday night and snatch up some unsuspecting homo or negro or jew, or camel jockey, and provide their family with a little pinata type entertainment????

Sheesh.

The Sodomy Squadron was first exposed by Joe Murray, of Agape Press. Damn him and his spies!

...If one digs deeper into the cultural psyche of America, he will find that Christianity no longer sets the standard for proper human behavior. The Sodomy Squadron has been flying high, for the Supreme Court has deemed sodomy a fundamental right, the Federal Marriage Amendment was DOA, and Massachusetts strong-armed the Catholic Church into ceasing its adoption program when it demanded that a Catholic agency allow same-sex couples to adopt children under the care of the Roman Catholic Church.

In the political sphere, traditionalists have been hit even harder. Despite the fact that the GOP has control of Congress and the White House, this year's "America's Values Agenda" has failed to spread its wings. While the Flag Burning Amendment was only narrowly defeated, the bill to protected the words "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance became a political Hindenburg. As reported by Associated Press, "Republicans could not muster a simple majority on the issue in a committee where they outnumber Democrats by six."

And the final nail in America's cultural coffin? The American public. In a poll recently conducted by Gallup, just 48 percent of Americans believe that the federal government should "be involved in promoting moral values." Another 48 percent believe the feds should mind its own business. Thus, we have become a nation home to two different peoples, and we Christians constitute the counter-culture.

(my bold)

(Oh, and here marks the first appearance of The Sodomy Squadron at Pammy's place.)

I swear, you just can't make these nutjobs up.

Know what else? It's a ~~god~~disembodiedtelicentitydamned shame when some little barely-out-of-Aparteid country has more sense than the world's "only remaining superpower".

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) -- Gays in South Africa can be joined in matrimony under new legislation passed by parliament -- an unprecedented move on a continent where homosexuality is taboo.

Traditionalists said they were saddened, and gay activists said the bill, passed Tuesday, did not go far enough. Veterans of the governing African National Congress hailed the Civil Union Bill for extending basic freedoms to everyone under the spirit of the country's first post-apartheid constitution, adopted a decade ago by framers determined to make discrimination a thing of the past.

"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed, culture and sex," Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula declared.

Kudos, Big F'ing Kudos, to South Africa for approving equal marriage rights!

Open Message to Fundies

2006-11-14T11:51:00.000-05:00

Guest post by Rich Hughs

Hey Fundies, shut up! – It’s for your own good. Let’s assume that you are actually on the right path and there is a god and all that, why go and spoil it all by being such bad adverts for your cause?

If I saw a subset of society that was loving, caring, smart, a joy to be around, tolerant of others and who lead by example I might think, “Gosh! What’s their secret?” I’d be all over that like it had blue cheese on it.

Similarly, If I see a group of intolerant, bigoted, science denying lying braggarts, I’m likely to think,”Gods people? Bwahahahahah!”

Here’s my WEDGIE strategy for you.

Focus on being nice, not shit.
Let people convert themselves without help, because you club is SOOO kewl.
If reality doesn’t fit with your creation story, just move on. Don’t start a thousand year disinformation campaign.
Try to be inclusive, not exclusive.
The creator probably doesn’t like to be misrepresented…
Your ‘inerrant book’ is not a logical argument, nor a font of fact.

It’s a big world, with room for everyone. I understand the unknown is scary and mortality sucks. We are all both noble and wretched together. There is no one above my fellow man on my list, in all candor, you can’t say the same.

Thanks, Matt!

2006-11-14T10:28:00.000-05:00

Matt, our friend from Pooflingers Anonymous, just sent us the tweak to remove the "Read the rest of my thought" link from posts that don't actually have a "rest of my thought".

It's been a minor annoyance for a while, but I'm glad it's fixed.

Big ol' kisses from us to him!

Hey! Ed Brayton Still Owes Me an Apology!

2006-11-13T14:46:00.000-05:00

He called me a bubblehead!

Has anyone let him in on the joke yet?

Jesus Camp Bites the Dust!

2006-11-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

Via Laura Elizabeth's blog, Christianity Today is finally spreading The Real Good News.

Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire Camp—the subject of the controversial new documentary Jesus Camp—has announced that it will be shutting its doors in the wake of vandalism and negative public response.

Fisher's camp—located in Devil's Lake, North Dakota—has been the subject of much attention since the film's release, with many critics and moviegoers denouncing the camp's methods as militant and inappropriate. Upon the film's release, the Kids on Fire camp site and the local Assemblies of God church were both vandalized, with damages at the camp totaling $1,500. Says Fischer about her decision to close down her camp: "I have a responsibility to keep the children safe."

We agree, Becky. It's about time you stopped f'ing them up.

A Mention in Nature (sort of)

2006-11-12T20:25:00.000-05:00

The Boy is just setting up a new blog, just for him. He has the story at Crowded Head, Cozy Bed.

Go say hi. And, of course, read where UDoJ sort of got mentioned in Nature!

Don't expect much, though. He's still setting the joint up.

Kisses to The Boy. (OK, that's a little weird.)

Open Thread

2006-11-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

We should probably do this every now and again. Go ahead, say whatever you want (just go easy on the f bomb, if you would). Blog whore, post funny links, spout off, whatever.

Here's a start...

From House of the Rising Sons, Red State Blues.

Best blog name of a Thumber, blahablahablahablahablahablahablaha (I actually bumped into this blog using the random Next Blog button up top - kinda kool!).

Any blog run by two girls who call themselves Harlot and Vicious Trollop, is ok by us. Go check out The Book Bitches. "Two very opinionated bitches talk about books and bitch about other stuff too."

------------

Cuzin Bob who lives in Knightdale called us up at the last minute yesterday. He always gets 4 season tickets to all the NCState football and basketball games, and then he and Lisa take friends or family or whatever. Yesterday there was a last minute opening to go see the basketball game and wanted to know if we wanted to go. We had great seats to watch the Pack come from 9 pts down at the half to win in the last few seconds. Very exciting.

------------

Shakespeare is gettin' big in a hurry. He's gone from like 12 pounds when we got him at 2 months old, to every bit of 30 pounds now. He lost one of his teeth, though. One of those right up front on the top, too! Is that unusual, or do dogs have two sets of teeth, too? I'll have to ask the vet this Friday when we go in for our appointment.

Maybe that's why he's not been eating so much...

Ok, have at it.

Readers, Fans, and Dreamers

2006-11-11T10:24:00.000-05:00

Whilst making a bit of conversation over at Robyn's blog (see the previous post), something pleasant and unexpected happened. We named you.

Heretofore, we've sort of referred to y'all rather generically. "Readers" "Fans" etc. We never really thought about it before, but you guys (and girls) are all really special to us, and you deserve to be recognized as such.

Well, now you're "Dreamers". What do ya' think? Hope you like it.

(Who wants to be in charge of making up the secret handshake?)

Just Sayin'

2006-11-11T09:07:00.000-05:00

A wonderful little break from the culture wars. Robyn's blog is a refreshing little place that's just about life. I found it calming.

[UPDATE: We've added a new (much needed, I think) section to the blog links in the left sidebar, of which Robyn's blog is our first entry.]

If you stop over, say something nice. Don't wreck the place.

For once, that's all I'm gonna say 'bout that!

Motherhood

2006-11-11T07:21:00.000-05:00

Ok, so following a link I found on a blog, the link to which I found on another blog and so on and so on... (Commonly referred to as blog-hopping.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. I was Skinny Dipping with the President. Anyways, back in mid August (about the time I was toolin' 'round London way), R (the author of this gloriously pink blog) took a moment to drop a few comments about Motherhood that I really appreciated at this ungodly hour of the morning.

When I pictured motherhood, I pictured myself hanging out around the blow up pool, colored drink in hand, reading a fabulously trashy novel. Occasionally I'd give her a cupcake and then run to the mall before she figured out I was gone. She would have tons of dolls, and about three books. I would arrange playdates with the "cool mothers" and we would discuss the wild boys of our college days and the merits of various recreational drugs. I'd play Depeche Mode and dance in the yard with her little friends.

I'm sooooo down with that picture, 'cept a whole crapload of books.

Alas and alack, apparently someone somewhere along the line decided to go around and wreck all that for us future mothers. I'm blaming the Republicans.

Anyways, R's post and her observations about her two year old tickled my fancy, and I'm sure it will tickle yours. Go read the rest of it.

Channel UDoJ

2006-11-10T11:52:00.000-05:00

Hey, we have our own channel on YouTube! It's called "Channel UDoJ", conveniently enough. You can click the link below or the logo at the top of the right sidebar.

Check out Channel UDoJ at YouTube.

Fundy Ted Haggard's "Restoration"

2006-11-09T08:13:00.000-05:00

From this morning's paper, Teddy "I Art no homo" Haggard is still good for a chuckle...

Nov 8, 9:36 PM EST

Haggard Begins Spiritual 'Restoration'

By DAN ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

DENVER (AP) -- There will be prayer, and perhaps the laying on of hands. There will be counseling and a confession. And there will be advice, confrontation and rebuke from "godly men" appointed to oversee the spiritual "restoration" of the Rev. Ted Haggard.

After tumbling from the pinnacle of the American evangelical movement amid allegations he snorted meth and cavorted with a male prostitute, Haggard has agreed to a rehabilitation process that could last three to five years.

"I see success approximately 50 percent of the time," said H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian ministry in Colorado Springs. "Guys just wear out and they can no longer subject themselves to the process."

Those who fail "end up selling cars or shoes or something, and being miserable and angry the rest of their lives," London said.

Oh yeah. If you refuse to go straight (I kill me), you'll be miserable and turn into a dirty car salesman!

Sounds to me like this "restoration" really F's a person up. All the dirty car and shoe salesman of the world should sue their asses.

"From the Christian perspective, we think in terms of prayer, we think in terms of what we call godly counsel, where godly men who are clean themselves insert themselves in the life of the one who is struggling," London said.

The symbolic laying on of hands may also be a part of the recovery, London said.

OOOO. Teddy's gonna LOVE this! He's gonna get hands, and laying, and insertion! It'll be a warm-up for when he goes to jail on the meth charges.

Wait, I thought they were trying to make him straight?

Your Penis is a Christmas Tree

2006-11-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

No, really. Just ask Yeshua_is_king.

[UPDATE:Speaking of complete IDiots, Kristine at Amused Muse talks a little about her ongoing soap opera... Current episodes include MorphoDyke, DaveTard, and DAJ. Check it out when you're finished reading the rest of this little gem below the fold.]

Ok, you just gotta love Fundies Say the Darndest Things. It's gotta be one of the funniest sites on that interweb thingy.

Here is one of the best I've seen.

"The original sin between Adam and Eve was that they consumned each others own sexual fluids. The tree of the knowledge of good and bad was Adam's penis. If you use a digital camera to take a picture of your erect penis on the side you see when looking down at it and put the picture into your computer you can fit an equilateral triangle around the head of it. This is the Christmas tree. Anamita Muscaria mushrooms (magic mushrooms) grow under evergreen trees and are psychoactive. The Christmas tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and bad which is a symbol for Adam's penis ... The original sin altered man's mind and caused man to think in abstract ways and gave them the proclivity and drive to invent and construct things and delve into science that has resulted in all technology we see today. The pursuit of science is destroying the Earth as everything man does is destroying the very planet we live on. This knowledge from Satan the Serpent was a poison knowledge.

The serpent was also Adam's penis. The medical symbol the Caduceus is a pole with a pine cone on top with two serpents wrapped around it. The two serpents are male and female and they are the double helix of DNA and they also represent the Hindu rise of the first (anus) and second (sexual organs) chakras up the spinal column untill they reach the 6th chakra the pineal gland in the center of the brain the seat of imagination, spiritual insight and awareness."

Yeshua_is_king@yahoo.com, The Pagan Prattle

Mushrooms are MAGIC!

King of Falsified Evidence

2006-11-08T11:41:00.000-05:00

Okay okay okay...

[UPDATED: To help illustrate, and assist the voters, graphics of the comments in question have been added...]

Speaking of competence, which is funnier?:

With 12 precincts reporting,
Totals Thus Far:

DaveScot: 2
AFDave: 10

"Well, no, they aren't REAL marines praying in that picture, but they COULD be so that proves my point! -dt"

(The long-time and well known Photoshop hoax of Marines praying...)

or

"Well yes, I DID use my magic marker to add all those data points, but if they WERE on that graph, then the earth might be 6000 years old, so that proves my point! -AFDt"

(First AFDave posts a graph...)

(Then AFDave expounds upon his point...)

(JohnF very kindly posts the original graph...)

(Steve Story expounds upon AFDave...)

In the spirit of election day, we should have a vote for "King of Falsified Evidence".

Vote here.

Vote early, vote often.

Pam is on CNN!

2006-11-07T18:08:00.000-05:00

Pam, over at Pam's House Blend (fellow NC blogger, and we LOVE her site) is live on CNN's blogger party! I just saw her on TV, too!

Go say hi!

What Are People Saying about DaveScot?

2006-11-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

Over at the Amused Muse, DaveScot said "I was just following google hits to "davescot" around. No conspiracy. Just narcissism." Well this got me to chuckling, and wondering, just what ARE people around the web saying about UD's version of Howard Stern? At the risk of feeding the ego, the google results are below the fold.

Uncommon Descent: The Intelligent Design Weblog of William Dembski ...
by DaveScot on November 2nd, 2006 · 19 Comments. From the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works… Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in ...
www.uncommondescent.com/ - 24k - Nov 5, 2006

Ok, first up, we of course have a link to UD. It's to the "Global Cooling" post Dave made on November 2^nd. We're interested in what is being said about Dave, not by Dave, so we'll move on.

DaveScot: See what people are saying right now on Technorati
See all blog posts tagged with DaveScot on Technorati.
www.technorati.com/tags/DaveScot - 37k

The first page of Technorati links consist of a link to CommonDescent, a blog purporting to be a "place for non moderated Comments and Discussions about Intelligent Design and Co. And Nobody will edit your comment" (according to its header), a link to the same UD post as above, and six hits to Comments on ID and Creationism.

First CommonDescent, a "place for non moderated Comments and Discussions about Intelligent Design and Co. And Nobody will edit your comment". Strangely enough, though, each post has an editor listed... lessee.... DaveScot, Denyse O'Leary, PaV, oh..... Looks like the blog just mirrors UD, Telic Thoughts, Post-Darwinist, etc. Strangely enough, no comments on the posts. Now, I don't mean "only a few comments", and I don't mean "most of the posts". I'm talking ZERO comments on ANY of the posts. Funny that, given its header.

So we can't see anyone saying anything about Dave here, either. We have to move on.

As for Comments On ID and Creationism, it's most relevent page on Dave is found here. Not terribly flattering, Daveyboy. Better luck with the next hit.

Pharyngula::Don't post, just watch
Two people that I did evict a while back are John Davison and DaveScot. ... The best part: near the end, Davison and DaveScot start bickering with each ...
pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dont_post_just_watch/ - 35k -

Well, I think we can all guess what PZ thinks of Dave. We can keep going, I think.

The Austringer » Censorship at PT? I Don’t Think So.
But there are some behaviors that shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere, and both “Evolving Apeman” and “DaveScot” violated a clearly stated rule at PT. ...
austringer.net/wp/?p=112 - 38k -

Ditto Wes.

Clever Beyond Measure: Prodigious genius DaveScot turns out to be ...
DaveScot, who is William Dembski's alpha-lapdog at Uncommon Descent, seems to have ... Nonetheless, here DaveScot shares some info regarding his prodigious ...
jswynne.typepad.com/gropes/2006/07/prodigious_geni.html - 40k -

Ditto Jim. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?

Feed Yourself To The Moss.: DaveScot is Not a Laughing Matter
I am talking about DaveScot. He is a man I cynically laughed at, ... DaveScot is clearly not the man whose clear religiosity and lack of science training ...
schmittvandean.blogspot.com/2006/01/davescot-is-not-laughing-matter_31.html - 22k -

Well here's one we're not familiar with...

At first glance, Reverend Schmitt seems supportive!

I have done a great disservice to a scientist, a singular man in the evolution-Intelligent Design debate, whose unique and fresh look at the discussion deserves far more limelight from both sides.

I am talking about DaveScot. He is a man I cynically laughed at, denigrated and abused when I found he would be blogging at Uncommon Descent, the antievolution blog of Discovery Institute fellow William Dembski. As usual when reality counters my pessimism I am proud to announce that I was wrong and that I am truly sorry. I should have known better. The signs were there.

Huh. Oh wait. My sarcasm meter might need adjusting...

As an agnostic DaveScot rejects the theism so common to his brothers-in-arms - he is living proof that supporters of Intelligent Design are not necessarily motivated by religion. He states his agnosticism thus: 'The game was rigged for life to win. Anyone who argues with that is either uninformed or in denial.' As an agnostic myself I can only admire the conviction he holds - so lacking in other agnostics - that the universe was crafted by some sort of intelligent entity with Godlike abilities. DaveScot is clearly not the man whose clear religiosity and lack of science training caused me to place Uncommon Descent in the 'religion' section of my blogroll.

Well.

My apologies, I am getting off track. My point is this: I am truly sorry for suggesting that it would be hilarious if DaveScot was made a blogger at Uncommon Descent. There is absolutely nothing funny going on over there, and DaveScot is a profoundly sciencey addition to the entire enterprise.

Update: the last link in this post no longer works, as it appears William Dembski deleted DaveScot's rant. Oh, DaveScot, had you only been faster with the ol' banning stick. Now religion will forever be a part of Uncommon Descent. This is a sad day for opponents to the Darwinian hegemony.

-The Rev. Schmitt.

Ouch. Well it seemed like there might be some hope for some positive review of Dave. Guess not.

Creation Bits: DaveScot is Destroying Dembski's Blog [Updated, not ...
It seems that DaveScot is trying his best to alienate everyone who disagrees with ... DaveScot is essentially the new Commander-in-Chief of Dembski's blog, ...
crevobits.blogspot.com/2006/01/davescot-is-destroying-dembskis-blog.html - 50k -

Ooblog » Blog Archive » DaveScot Scores an Own Goal
DaveScot strikes again ! « Comments on ID and creationism Says: ... DaveScot Scores an Own Goal Over at chez Dembski, the craniorectally inverted DaveScott ...
www.ooblick.com/weblog/2006/06/11/davescot-scores-an-own-goal/ - 17k -

“DaveScot” is a Fucking Moron « Superlicious
And Christian Fundamentalist idiot, as evidenced by these three comments all in the same thread. Christ on a hot tin.
pianoman.wordpress.com/2005/11/01/davescot/ - 14k -

Positive Liberty » Blog Archive » Why DaveScot Should Stop Playing ...
DaveScot is an especially belligerent idiot who was happily adopted as a co-blogger by ... Why DaveScot Should Stop Playing Lawyer DaveScot is an especially ...
positiveliberty.com/2006/07/why-davescot-should-stop-playing-lawyer.html - 28k -

An Interesting Take on UDoJ

2006-11-06T08:44:00.000-05:00

From guthrie, over at AtBC, we get this very interesting take on our little blog. The g-man has been one of our favoritest posters, so his thoughts intrigue us...

Are you not heading towards the idea that Dembski is doing street theatres?

The internet offers great potential for experiential art (I dont know, I'm just calling it that because I dont know any different, ok) by interaction. The aim would be to broaden and entertain the participants whilst calling into doubt their world model.

Or something like that.

Think of UDoJ as an example.

Wow. In all honesty, I have to say that I never really thought of this blog as serious art. I like his term "experiential art", though. Really, he may be on to something. Are blogs like this one, or blogs in general really, "experiential art"? Do we broaden and entertain you participants? I certainly hope so. Do we make you think? I hope we do that, too. We certainly broaden and entertain ourselves. We cause ourselves to think about things we otherwise wouldn't.

Wow, if we serve to broaden, entertain, and cause you to think too, then I guess there aren't many better compliments that could be paid to us.

Sometimes we aim for one, sometimes the other. On occasion we even attempt to do all three. It is our collective hope that we succeed as often as possible.

Michael J. Fox On Limbaugh and Stem Cells

2006-11-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

Came across this video of Katie Couric interviewing Michael J. Fox. Touching and poignant. Gotta love 'em both.

Keith Olbermann reports on Scumbag OxyMoron Limbaugh's bullshit comments.

Bill Maher's New Rules For Democrats

2006-11-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

From last night, 11/03/06.

Funny, but sadly true, stuff.

I Did Not Have Sex with that Man...

2006-11-03T15:43:00.000-05:00

In the lastest bit of fundy fun, Ted "I Art No Homo" Haggard says he did buy the meth, but didn't use it, and only got in touch with the male prostitute for a massage.

umm... yeah.

CNN's headline reads thus:

Pastor admits buying meth

A top evangelical leader who is accused of paying a male prostitute for sex admitted today he contacted his accuser "for a massage" and purchased methamphetamine from him. But the Rev. Ted Haggard said he never had sex with Mike Jones and threw away the drugs.

From the full article...

Haggard told CNN affiliate KUSA-TV on Friday that he received Jones' name as "a referral" from a hotel where he was staying in Denver.

He did not name the hotel. "I did call him," Haggard said. "I called him to buy some meth, but I threw it away."

Haggard spoke to the Denver TV station from inside a car, with his wife, Gayle, in the passenger seat.

"I was buying it for me, but I never used it. I was tempted. ...

"He told me about it. I went there for a massage."

Asked whether Haggard's admission of knowing him was a vindication, Jones replied, "Thank you. Exactly."

Repeat after me: "I didn't inhale." "I did not have sexual relations with that man."

Operation Yellow Elephant

2006-11-03T14:04:00.000-05:00

Via Operation Yellow Elephant, we give you this post by Steve Gilliard.

This will be brief.

We need to be honest here: Iraq is not worth one more dead American.

People on the right and left want some deus ex machina to save Iraq, but we have., collectively, come to a simple conclusion:

Iraq is not worth dying for. Not for the warmongers on the right or the liberal hawks on the left.

It's bad the soldiers are trapped there, but we have made it their problem, No one is willingly going to join them, and 5,000 have deserted so far.

When you ask liberal hawks to enlist, they are offended by the question.

When you ask conservatives to enlist, they are offended by the question.

And America's parents are NOT sending their kids to die in Iraq if they can, at all, help it. No one blows up IED's at Wal Mart.

We have a volunteer army with fewer and fewer volunteers, and people reenlisting only to save their friends. There is a time limit to their ability to be in combat. They cannot serve forever. They will have to be replaced. And fewer and fewer are willing to replace them,

What I want people to do is be honest.

If you will not serve in Iraq, and no one you know will serve, stop expecting someone else to do what you will not.

Therefore, it is time to stop calling for more troops, or the US to make Iraq safe. We cannot do this and even Americans are refusing to join the fight. It is time to look at your actions and realize, that despite your ideals, you oppose continuing this war. In practical terms, you have decided that this war is not worth your life or anyone you know. And million of Americans have joined you in this decision.

So, with this fact evident, it is time to call for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. Not save it, not add more boots on the ground. You have already voted by your actions. It is time that you match it with your words.

We agree. Iraq is NOT WORTH ONE MORE DEAD AMERICAN. It never was worth a dead American. It was a lie from the beginning, and had nothing to do with a "War on Terror". Nothing to do with WMDs, nothing to do with OBL. Next Tuesday, vote. Vote for candidates who will bring our people home NOW. And when those annoying little Christo-fascist theocrat Repugnantcans bother you, ask them why they aren't in Iraq.

One of the Funniest Referrals We've Had

2006-11-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

at least in a while.....

Click Here

Honeymoon In London

2006-11-02T20:12:00.000-05:00

Videos from The Boy's Honeymoon DVD I made last year. I'm just getting around to translating them into wmv format for the web. There's a bunch o' parts, so they'll go up as I finish them. There's even end credits (which will be put up rather early in the process... Deal with it).

Once they're all uploaded, I'll sort them into the order in which they appear on the DVD, just for coherence...

[EDIT - All done!]

Our Hotel

Around London

Buckingham Palace

Windsor Castle

Bath, and the Roman Baths

Stonehenge

Badger, the Aussie Bus Driver

Ben, Parliament, and The Abbey

St. Paul's Cathedral

Royal Horse Guards (and surrounding area)

Kensington Palace

The British Museum

The Eye and the Bridge

Natural History Museum, Part 1

Natural History Museum, Part 2

Tower Bridge

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain

Victoria and Albert Museum

Trafalgar Square

Tower of London

Wellington Square

Raphael, Our Concierge

End Credits (they came out like crapola on the web, sorry.)

Fundy Busted

2006-11-02T19:55:00.000-05:00

On the AP wire, Fundy-Anti-gay Ted "I Art no homo!" Haggard gets busted paying for sex with a man. Too f'ing funny.

[Pam, at Pam's House Blend, gives her report. Well worth a read, and a great blog, btw! OOOOO!! OOOOO!!! THERE'S EVEN AUDIO OF THE VOICEMAILS HE LEFT FOR JONES AND THEY'VE BEEN VOICE MATCHED TO HAGGARD!!! GOT TO LOVE PAM!!!]

[UPDATE FROM CNN - "The church official who temporarily has assumed Haggard's post said late Thursday that there has been "some admission of guilt," but not to all of the allegations. He did not give any more details."

"The allegations were made Tuesday and Wednesday on Denver radio station KHOW by Mike Jones, who said he was a male prostitute and had a three-year sexual relationship with Haggard, with the last tryst occurring in August. He also said Haggard used methamphetamine during their encounters."

"Jones said the relationship began about three years ago, when a man identifying himself as "Art" -- who said he was a married man from Kansas City, Missouri -- sought his services. Jones said he advertised at the time as a male prostitute on the Internet and in newspapers serving the gay community.

The two saw each other about once a month, with Art visiting Jones in Denver and paying him $200 in cash "for no more than an hour," Jones said.

"It was not emotional. It was physical, just strictly physical," he said.

Jones said he learned Art's identity when he saw him on television four months ago. Jones said he became upset when he learned that Haggard's church supported the proposed state constitutional amendment.

Asked whether he has proof to support his claims, Jones told KHOW that he kept several voice mails from Haggard on his telephone answering machine and an envelope containing two $100 bills from him."]

The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the influential National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday after being accused of paying for sex with a man. Haggard - who has been a leading opponent of the drive for same-sex marriage - also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church while a church panel investigates, saying he could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations." (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Oh, the earth-shattering hypocrisy.

(Be sure to return some link love to Kristine at Amused Muse, and check out the Reverend BigDumbChimp's comment, where he posts a link to the video of Haggard's denial.)

In case you don't remember who this nutjob is, here's the clip of his insanity when confronted by Richard Dawkins (from Root of All Evil...

Halloween Daytime Video

2006-11-01T13:10:00.000-05:00

We do a little decorating for our favorite holiday. This is what it looks like during the day.

Night video and stills to follow after a while...

Halloween Night Video

2006-11-01T10:26:00.000-05:00

Sorry we haven't done much posting lately. We were prepping for our favorite holliday. Halloween Night video below the fold.

Blogger is giving me crap, so pics will have to wait until later.

The Rosetta Stone, 2005

2006-10-30T09:02:00.000-05:00

Pictures of the real thing, and video capture of the touchable facsimile, both housed in the British Museum.

(This was just in response to a post at The Austringer.)

Jersey Rocks

2006-10-25T15:41:00.000-05:00

Contrary to the long held opinion of The Boy (who grew up in Philly), Jersey is currently the coolest state in the Union. It is now the only state where people of no sexual preference are treated the same as everyone else...

Via CNN

New Jersey court recognizes right to same-sex unions

POSTED: 3:49 p.m. EDT, October 25, 2006

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples.

But the court left it to the Legislature to determine whether the state will honor gay marriage or some other form of civil union.

Advocates on both sides of the issue believed the state posed the best chance for gay marriage to win approval since Massachusetts became the only state to do so in 2003 because the New Jersey Supreme Court has a history of extending civil rights protections.

Instead, the high court stopped short of fully approving gay marriage and gave lawmakers 180 days to rewrite marriage laws to either include gay couples or create new civil unions. (Opinion -- pdfexternal link)

"The issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people," the court said in its 4-3 ruling.

New Jersey lawmakers voted to allow domestic partnerships in 2004, but they have been reluctant to delve into the sensitive issue of marriage.

Under domestic partnerships, gay couples have some benefits of marriage, such as the right to inherit possessions if there is no will and healthcare coverage for state workers.

The case was brought by seven gay couples who say the state constitution allows them to marry.

New Jersey is one of only five U.S. states with neither a law nor a state constitutional amendment blocking same-sex marriage. As a result, the state is more likely than others to allow gays to wed, said advocacy groups on both sides.

Only Massachusetts -- by virtue of a 2003 ruling from that state's top court -- allows gay marriages.

Proponents and opponents from across the country are watching the case closely.

"New Jersey is a stepping stone," said Matt Daniels, president of the Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage, a group pushing for an amendment to the federal Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. "It's not about New Jersey."

From a practical standpoint, the Massachusetts court decision made little impact nationally because the state has a law barring out-of-state couples from wedding there if their marriages would not be recognized in their home states.

New Jersey has no such law.

People on both sides of the issue expect a victory for same-sex unions would make New Jersey a destination for gay couples from around the country who want to get married. Some of those couples could return home and sue to have their marriages recognized.

Daniels said gay-rights advocates are already looking ahead to such lawsuits. "Their game, of course, is they figure all they need to do is execute this maneuver in a half-dozen states and they'll have the momentum," he said.

David S. Buckel, the Lambda Legal lawyer who argued on behalf of the seven New Jersey couples, said he expects some couples would travel to the New Jersey to get married if his suit is successful. But, he said, "it won't be tidal."

Buckel said that there have been relatively few such lawsuits filed in the U.S. by couples who went to Canada to exchange vows.

And, he said, while many same-sex couples would prefer to be married, they are getting more legal protections for their relationships. Several states, including New Jersey, offer domestic partnerships or civil unions with some of the benefits of marriage. A growing number of employers are treating same-sex couples the same way they treat married couples.

Cases similar to New Jersey's are pending in California, Connecticut, Iowa and Maryland.

Conservatives watching the cases believe the best chance for gay marriage to be allowed would be in New Jersey, where the state Supreme Court has a history of extending civil rights protections.

Gay marriage supporters have had a two-year losing streak, striking out in state courts in New York and Washington state and in ballot boxes in 15 states where constitutions have been amended to ban same-sex unions.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

We still hate the Devils, though.

Bye Bye Bobby...

2006-10-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

I know we were just bitching about Bobby Clarke. I know we were extremely unhappy about the personell changes lately. But remember too, that we mentioned we worship at the altar of Bobby. Fighting understandable tears, he stepped down as GM this morning, about a half hour ago.

Also caught in the crossfire, a casualty, collateral damage, was Ken Hitchcock. Hitch didn't deserve to be fired, it wasn't his fault, but there it is.

Paul Holmgren, also a former Flyer from way back, will be taking over as GM, and assistant coach (and former head coach of the Philadelphia Phantoms) John Stevens is taking over as coach.

Ed. Mr. Snyder. Sir. Make sure you make room for both of these men somewhere in the organization.

Tower of London, in Five Parts

2006-10-20T10:53:00.000-05:00

All five parts below the fold.

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at the Tower of London, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Part the First

Part the Second

Part the Third

Part the Fourth

Part the Last

Jack The Ripper Part Twelve

2006-10-19T17:55:00.000-05:00

Part Twelve. The denoument...

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Eleven

2006-10-19T17:26:00.000-05:00

Part Eleven. The penultimate piece of the puzzle....

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Ten

2006-10-19T16:29:00.000-05:00

Part Ten. Dickie is awesome, ain't he?

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Nine

2006-10-19T16:26:00.000-05:00

Part Nine. Well on your way to knowing who dunnit. (Hint: It weren't God.)

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Eight

2006-10-19T16:25:00.000-05:00

Part Eight, Better Stay up Late.

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Seven

2006-10-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

Part Seven.

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Six

2006-10-19T16:16:00.000-05:00

Part Six, grab your crucifix...

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Five

2006-10-19T16:14:00.000-05:00

Part Five, I know you've been dying to see it!

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Four

2006-10-19T14:49:00.000-05:00

Better lock your door.

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part Three

2006-10-19T14:17:00.000-05:00

(Part Two would be the little clip about King George, a few posts ago... which was actually the third chapter, but I'm squeezing the little chapters together.... eh... never mind, this is the next part.)

Again, be sure to go take the tour with Dickie at Ripping Yarns, if ever you are in London. I promise you, you will NOT be disappointed.

Jack The Ripper Part One

2006-10-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

Due to the ten minute limit on YouTube, I have to split this tour up into 12 parts.

Here's Part One....

Video For Lifewish

2006-10-19T13:28:00.000-05:00

Way back in this thread before I went to London, I promised Lifewish I would see what I could do about some video for him....

Here it is:

Quick and rough, the ceiling of St. Paul's Cathedral, from the whispering gallery. Now this is just a few seconds of video, surreptitious, and is the inside of the dome. Sorry I couldn't do better.

[EDIT: Ok YouTube caught up...]

Madman King George

2006-10-18T11:36:00.000-05:00

Ok, over at Amused Muse, I made a comment about Dickie the Beefeater who mentioned King George.

As it turns out, it was on our Jack the Ripper tour, which we took (Dickie is a real Beefeater but moonlights as a Ripper tour guide). [EDIT: Here's a link to Ripping Yarns, the company for which he gives tours]

Just so y'know.

Here's the clip from our video.

Dickie was an awesome guide, which is why we decided to take HIS Ripper tour instead of any other. If you ever get a chance to go, be sure to do both his tours.

9 to 1

2006-10-18T05:56:00.000-05:00

We love our Flyboys, but damn. Just damn.

It got unbearably ugly, so we had to turn it off after the second intermission.

Now let me just say that the Broad Street Bullies were a team of history and destiny. Captain Bobby Clarke was probably one of the best players to ever strap on the skates. However. As a general manager, we have some reservations. This strategy of break up what could have been another great team is dumb. The team at the end of the season before the lockout could have been awesome given some time together. Even the team after the lockout could have been great.

Not to take anything away from Peter Forsberg, but this whole plan of give up damned near everyone just to get and keep Forsberg is not working.

The list of casualties since the lockout...

John LeClair
Jeremy Roenick
Mark Recchi
Michal Handzus
Justin Williams
Kim Johnsson
Donald Brashear
Danny Markov
Tony Amonte

Not to even mention the unfortunate retirement-by-concussion of Keith Primeau. Big, big loss there. We miss you, Keith.

Now, we've still got talent. Gagne, Umberger, Carter, Richards, Kapanen, Niittymaki, Esche, and of course Forsberg. But when the list of losses over the last year or two looks like the one above, you get games like last night.

9-1.

We loved you as a player, Bobby, but DAMN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?????