3. A person shall not distribute any campaign material concerning a target candidate with the intent to encourage the recipient of that campaign material to vote against that target candidate, without first … obtaining, in writing, the prior consent of the beneficiary candidate to the distribution of the campaign material.

4. A person shall not distribute any campaign material that contains a cartoon, caricature, or defacement of the personal likeness of a target candidate.

5. A person shall not distribute any campaign material that contains photographs or other depictions of human role playing, except of a candidate who has approved the campaign material.

6. A person shall not distribute any campaign material regarding a vote cast by a target candidate who is a member of a house of the general assembly if a majority of the membership of the house of which the target candidate is a member voted in the same manner as the target candidate and if the majority of those members of that house of the general assembly who are affiliated with the political party which is not the party of the target candidate voted in the same manner as the target candidate.

2. Creationists in Texas are upset that they won’t be allowed to give out degrees in creation science. So here is a new story about what they are trying to do to get around that. They want to make by pass the system and make it so ANY non-profit organization that does not take federal money is able to give out degrees in anything they want. Here are some nice comments i found on this:

From PZ Myers of ScienceBlogs:

If it were to pass, though, I’d like to move to Texas for a few months, open a free daycare, and issue doctoral degrees to every toddler who can go a day without pooping his pants. I’d have the diplomas printed on diapers, too.

A commenter on the blog Pharyngula:

*Rubs hands together*

You know, PZ, if this law does pass, it only allows us to open our private, non-profit “creation research” institutions “in Texas” (let’s make them distance-learning institutions, we’re all busy people here) to grant degrees without the board’s approval, too.

Which means that every legitimate scientist in the world could be automatically granted a degree in Creation Studies! What good would that do? Well, can you imagine the headline, “Overwhelming majority of Creation Scientists accept evolution, reject Designer”?

“Consensus of Creation Scientists for evolution; Dembski stunned”

“Creationists a minority in Creation Studies”

Bwahahaha!

“In scientific stunner, creation scientists reject creation”

I certainly hope neither of these bills get anywhere, but i sure am glad there are people around to put them forth to give the rest of us a laugh.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/undersea_eruptions_near_tonga.html

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/australia-issues-wikileaks-linking-fine-warning-585894

This is a blatent and stupid attempt to curtail free speech. Shame on you Australia.

You can not stop the signal, you fools!

a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem.

For those of you reading this from another planet who may be unaware, the efficacy of condoms to greatly reduce the transmission of STDs is beyond overwhelming and beyond any shadow of scientific doubt.

What is the solution? Abstinence is pretty good, according to the pope, and in addition to that he recommends

spiritual and human awakening and friendship for those who suffer.

<smacks forehead>

Is it mere coincidence that this resurgence in illegitimacy happened during the five years in which gay marriage has become (not thanks to me or my choice) the most prominent marriage issue in America — and the one marriage idea endorsed by the tastemakers to the young in particular?

This is of course nothing more than a stunningly stupid example of confusing correlation with causation.

But let’s assume it is true. Also, let’s ignore the fact that the entire concept of an “ïllegitimate child” is quite anachronistic and that maybe – just maybe – the level of responsibility among parents has not changed and it is simply the case that more long term couples are opting out of marriage.

What is the mechanism by which gay people or advocacy for gay marriage causes heterosexual couples to have more illegitimate kids? Do they just get stressed out and break down every time they hear someone advocating for gay marriage and this leads them to have more unprotected sex before marriage? Did Sarah Palin’s daughter see a news story about the gay marriage debate and got an uncontrollable urge to fuck her boyfriend’s brains out without protection? Or does the act gay men and women having sex itself put out negative psychic vibes that affect the psyche of heterosexual couples in such a way that it causes them to be irresponsible? Feel free to take a stab at this yourselves.

Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water.
Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

California Academy of Sciences

When someone recently stumbled upon this while looking at the oceans on Google Earth….

What do you imagine they thought they stumped upon?

Evidence for Atlantis, of course! It is unlikely to be a natural formation with all those straight lines and box shapes. Maybe even if it is not Atlantis it is some old, undiscovered city?

95% of the time, when a conspiracy theorist, or pseudoscientist presents a claim that seems so initially compelling,it has such a mundane explanation lurking just below the surface.

I remember when i first heard the claim from moon hoax theorists that there were no stars in the pictures of the moon landing and by golly they were right! I still doubted their conclusions, but their evidence seemed so strong, undediable almost. Of course, as it turns out, the answer was so blindly simple and obvious that even an amateur photographer would laugh at this quality of this evidence, which, by by the way, constitutes one of their strongest points. In this case it had everything to do with exposure. When you are on a very white surface, and the guy you are photographing is wearing a very white astronaut suit, and you have a big star glaring down on all this white stuff without an atmopshere to dull it, you need a *very* short exposure time or else the picture would just turn all white and your picture would be ruined. The stars did not show up because they are relatively *very* faint objects. And this is the level of evidence they love to work with. This was one of the first lessons i had in skepticism at a young age. The contrast between the apprent strength of the evidence and the obviousness and ease with which an answer could be given by someone who just knew a tiny bit about the subject is still palpable to this day – almost instantly it went from a huge conundrum to a laughable point.

The conundrum provided by the above picture, the seemignly strong evidence for an old, hidden cizilization may seem strong. But the answer, as it usually is, is just as simple.

A couple of weeks ago the image in question got so much attention that Google had to make an official statement about it. It turns out you can find that pattern in many, many places in the oceans as seen on Google Earth. It is an artifact of data collection. It comes from the boats that Google uses to do sonar mapping of the ocean flear. The boats do a <drum roll> grid pattern.

http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2009/03/friday_weird_science_condoms_a.php?utm_source=readerspicks&utm_medium=link

To test this they had to build a coital simulator. For those not keen enough to click on the block post, just take a look at what some poor grad student had to build:

Awesome

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/student-facing-20-years-in-hell-1643069.html

Here are two select quotes that will give you the gist of the situation:

Mr Kambaksh was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death last year for circulating an essay on women’s rights which questioned verses in the Koran.

and….

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country’s highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence.

…

It later emerged he was convicted by three mullahs, in secret, without access to a lawyer. The sentence was commuted to 20 years on appeal. At that appeal, in October, the key prosecution witness withdrew his testimony, claiming he had been forced to lie on pain of death. The prosecution then appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence. The defence appealed to quash his conviction altogether.

Meanwhile, the student has been languishing in a Kabul jail, fearing for his life. Islamic fundamentalists have been baying for his blood while moderate groups have led marches countrywide demanding his release.

Here are some notes i took while watching the video.

1. Notice the early discussion about the definition of evolution. Virtually no creationists deny that organisms undergo genetic mutation and change over time. What they say is that only “micro evolution”is possible but not “macro evolution”. There is   no real hard distinction in actual science, macro evolution is just micro evolution over long time spans. Another creationist idea that one very commonly hears is that no matter how much a species changes, they are always the same species. Sure you can breed dogs to be as small and bald as you want or as big and fury as you want, but it is still a dog. God made a template for each species at the moment of creation and no matter how much something mutates it can not turn into another species.

2. Though i am still only a couple minutes into the video another common creationist meme has cropped up at least twice which is the idea that unless something is observed you can not know about it. She seems to be sayign that since evolution and creation happened in the past which we did not directly observe, both camps are just interpreting the data and “speaking for it” from their own perspective – each starting with their own assumptions and viewing the data from that lens. In a contest between starting with man’s ideas vs god’s ideas, you can guess which she thinks win out.

3. Yup, all dating methods, even radiocarbon, are unreliable. In fact any evidence you have ever heard for the earth or universe being more than 6000 years old is unreliable or simply evaluated from a faulty human perspective rather than trusting god’s word.

4. Yes, even a one year old is a dirty sinner.

5. Everyone who has an different view point from her is “ïnterpreting” the bible whereas she is simply “reading it for what it says”. She seems to really believe that she is not interpreting at all when she reads which is, of course, impossible.

The video is only 23 minutes and cuts out in the middle of a question so maybe a second part will be posted soon. I always find it fascinating to hear creationist reasoning.