I’ve always thought that Ted Kennedy lived in an alternate universe, but now he admits it:
Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. “This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency,” he said. “The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws.” Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that “Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old.”
Harry Turtledove ought to hire him for some new story ideas.
Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):
Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…
…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.
Just so.
Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):
Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…
…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.
Just so.
Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):
Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…
…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.
Just so.
Just when you thought that twisted f**k Fred Phelps, and his “congregation” couldn’t get any sicker, guess what they’re protesting now?
A hate group based in Topeka, Kan. released a press release on Wednesday entitled
A few days ago I posted on an article about how boy monkeys and girl monkeys have differing toy preferences. Cathy Young dug into the study a little deeper.
I’ve had to ban blogspot from comments and pings, because I was starting to get a lot of spam with that in the URL. Apparently I wasn’t alone.
About 39,000 fake blogs have been created on the web in the past two weeks, according to an analysis by Technorati, or about 4.6 percent of the 805,000 new weblogs created in that period. FightSplog, which has been monitoring new blogs at Blogspot, recently documented 2,763 porn splogs created by a single “splogger.” Blogspot-based spam blogs recently began featuring names of prominent bloggers in posts, boosting the splogs’ visibility in searches at web-based RSS aggregators like Feedster, PubSub and Bloglines.
It would be nice if Google would share the wealth a little:
But Google itself seems to have closed that hole, according to Jeff Jarvis, who noted that searches on Google are free from the splog listings found in identical searches on PubSub and IceRocket, among others. “Google needs to both fix Blogspot and share its secrets for ignoring blogspam,” Jarvis writes.
Here’s one possible solution, to at least keep it down to a dull roar by no longer allowing automated blog setups:
Suggestion, Google? As bold as this might sound, you should institute an authentication system – a captcha of sorts – for every single post that gets sent through your Blogger service. This means that there’s no more easy rides for the idiots out there who are killing your baby and the blogosphere. The user logs in, enters their post, then has to jump through a captcha hoop – much like commenters have to do on Blogger.com these days. It’s a simple suggestion, and one that you really, really, really, REALLY oughta consider. You were willing to go the ref=”nofollow” route, why stop there?
That was a couple months ago, but I’ve still seen a lot of this crap when I open up the filters.
Anyway, until they wise up, friends don’t let friends blog on Blogspot. Get a real domain, folks.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, here’s the story at Wikipedia, with some more links.
Perennial “peace-movement” nutcase Bruce Gagnon has finally gotten off his duff and is attempting to put together an anti-nuclear protest of the New Horizons launch:
The list of comments on the space passenger NPRM continues to grow:
first of all, there should be NO commercial space flights since the pollution from commercial space flights negatively impacts every single u.s. citizen. one flight alone can kill thousands of people. i think this should be solely a govt. endeavor.
secondly, it is clear that the most rigorous standard must be used for any person who is permitted to do this by our govt. it is clear this should not just be a jaunt in the sky for a celebrity or rich man, as seems to be going on these days.
the pollution from these flights is substantial. it is time to put a damper on the endless pollution being allowed by those who profit from it, with no regard for those negatively impacted by the pollution from it (their health, their breathing dirty air, etc.
what does the rest of the american public gain from these kinds of extravaganzas? nothing.
Broken shift key. Broken brain.
If you want to read the rest (there are some serious comments up now, from XCOR, Rocketplane and Orbital Commerce), click here, and type in Docket Number 23449. Some of them are very large (multi-megabyte) PDFs. Interestingly, there’s nothing up there yet from Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic or The Spaceship Company. Is Burt just holding his fire? Or still looking for a regulatory end around?
Clark Lindsey (who is a physicist, at least by training) has more thoughts related to the earlier post.
[Update on Saturday morning]
Alan Boyle has a roundup of (mostly skeptical) comments from the scientific community.