Oklahoma, you can do better than Sally Kern

post from Pharyngula on 07 August 2008 09:40:45 AM. © Pharyngula

I'm afraid the odious Oklahoma legislator, Sally Kern, has opened her mouth again. She has declared herself a "cultural warrior for Judeo-Christian values. I despise the term "Judeo-Christian" — it's so fake, and such a transparent attempt to tie morality to religion. So what are these "Judeo-Christian" values?

"I am not saying everyone has to be Christian; this is not a homogenous nation," Kern said. "What you have to be is someone who believes in a Judeo-Christian ethic, in other words, in knowing there's a right and wrong.

That's it? Knowing that some things are bad to do and others are good is all there is? Pagans, heathens, wiccans, atheists, Muslims, and animists all know that; dogs seem to feel guilt, and we could even argue that jellyfish are able to see the world in these kinds of binary terms. So why pretend Jews and Christians invented it?

Oh…because she has to have an absolutist rational for parochial fundagelical American bigotry.

"Not all lifestyles are equal; not all religions are equal," she said. "Was I saying all people are not equal? Heavens no; we were all created equal."
Kern repeated her opposition to gay marriage and homosexuality, though the lawmaker said she supports people's individual rights.

Pssst, Oklahomans: Vote for Ron Marlett this fall. Anyone but Bughouse Sally, please.

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Gen Y's Corporate Games

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 07 August 2008 09:25:14 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Forbes.com: Technology News: Not long ago, playing digital games at work was considered a violation of company policies. But now many businesses are making it a job requirement. In an effort to connect with their growing ranks of 20-something workers who practically popped

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Elastic Electronics See Better

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 07 August 2008 09:23:52 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From BBC News | Technology | World Edition: A new camera designed with a curved detection surface allows imaging devices to see as animals do. The camera, inspired by the human eye, relies on the ability to construct silicon electronics on a stretchable membrane. In the future

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Ford Offers Glass Roof Mustangs

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 07 August 2008 09:18:14 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Crave: The gadget blog: Here's some bright news to go with your daily dose of bad these days. It may sound like sacrilege, but owners of new Ford Mustangs may actually have a chance to look cooler than Steve McQueen while driving. The $1,995 factory-installed panoramic gla

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Mother, May I Use My Cell Phone

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 07 August 2008 09:13:00 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

It really seems like there's no end is sight to the never-ending list of locations where you can't use a cell-phone. Appearing in the August issue of Acoustics & Audio Technology is a story "Cell Users May Fly the Unfriendly Skies" about legislative efforts in the U.S. to prohibit mobile phone u

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Facelift for Engineering Education

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 07 August 2008 09:13:00 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, thinks a revolution is needed in engineering education. An engineering professor himself, Duderstadt argued in a recent lecture that more education in the humanities and social sciences is necessary to produce young engineers wi

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Book Review - Ecology and World Biomes

post from Urban Science Adventures! © on 07 August 2008 09:13:00 AM. © Urban Science Adventures! ©

As a member of the Animal Behavior Society's Children Book Award Committee I get to review dozens of children's books each year. This year I had the pleasure of reviewin a phenonmenal series about Biomes. It is a perfect primer to ecology. Each book describes physical environment, features the plant, animal, and bug life of each biome, and introduces young readers, grades 1-3, to key vocabulary terms. Each book is very easy to read, 25 pages, and the photographs of animals and landscapes are breath taking.

The Series is produced by Scholastic News Nonfiction Readers.
A Home on the Tundra by Katie Marsico

A Home on the Savanna by Susan Labella

A Home in the Swamp by David C. Lion

A Home on the Prairie by David C. Lion

A Home in the Rain Forest by Christine Taylor-Butler

A Home in the Coral Reef by Christine Taylor-Butler

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Photographing the science museum

post from easternblot.net on 07 August 2008 09:00:00 AM. © easternblot.net

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Power of prayer

Barack Obama will be giving his acceptance speech at the DNC outside, so what do the geniuses at Focus on the Patriarchy propose to do? They urge their followers to pray for rain.

Pathetic. Why not suggest instead that they pray for thunderbolts of doom, and that the earth split open beneath Obama's feet and swallow him up with a chthonic belch of sulfur and magma? It would be just as effective.

I swear, god-botherers nowadays have lost all sense of style.

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Viruses and What is Life

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 07 August 2008 08:16:00 AM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Viruses are generally considered not to be alive (they must use a host cell of something else to reproduce). However, defining exactly what life is, is not as easy as you might think.

The debate about what counts as a living thing is fuelled today by the discovery of the first virus that is able to fall “ill” by being infected with another virus.
…
the discovery of a giant virus that itself falls ill through infection by another virus seems to suggest they too are alive, highlighting how there is no watertight definition of what exactly scientists mean when they refer to something as “living”.

“There’s no doubt, this is a living organism,” the journal Nature is told by Prof Jean-Michel Claverie, director of the Mediterranean Institute of Microbiology in Marseilles, part of France’s basic-research agency CNRS. “The fact that it can get sick makes it more alive.”