atxcats

Cute Cat Craziness!

2008-12-19T19:05:00.000-08:00

It's funny how cats won't spend 30 seconds on a cat toy you buy them, but give them a discarded box, and they amuse themselves for hours on end! (Or the cat equivalent of hours on end.)

What's the Word?! Tinklenberg!

2008-10-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

(I was going to link the title of this to the Michelle Bachmann Blog Carnival, but the site seems to be down for maintenance. I'll try again a bit later, so come back if you need more information.)

How Many Texas Cheerleaders Can You Cram Into an Elevator?

2008-08-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

During a cheerleading camp at UT Austin this week, a gaggle of high school cheerleaders decided to see how many cheerleaders can fit into an elevator.

If you want the elevator to remain functional, the answer is "fewer than 26," since that was the magic number that broke the elevator and caused it to become stuck with the door closed.

Fortunately, with 26 teen cheerleaders, you will have at least 20 cell phones, and within half an hour, they were rescued.

(click on the title for more details.)

The temperatures in Austin have been as high as 104 or 105 lately, so no wonder they are doing silly things -- or rather sillier than normal things.

Bush Jokes at G8: Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter

2008-07-10T13:38:00.001-07:00

George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan.

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

worst. president. ever.

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Another Internet Tradition or "John McCain is aware of the internet"

2008-06-23T16:44:00.001-07:00

I do hope you are aware of all internet traditions.

For now I shall give this a rest, okay?

UPDATE: I corrected the spelling of "McCain" -- oops

+
*

George Carlin, RIP

2008-06-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you.
He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!
-- George Carlin Politically Incorrect, May 29, 1997

OMFSM! Look who Visited my Blog!

2008-06-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

I guess they HAVE figured out the internets! (see post immediately below this one.)

Has the McCain Campaign Finally Figured Out the Internets?

2008-06-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

From the John McCain's Facebook Supporters page today:

"John McCain added the Pork Invaders application." Pork Invaders seems to be a game featuring various little pink piggies worth 10 - 30 points. I assume that the piggies are scarfed up by evil liberal Democrats. Or are the Democrats supposed to be the little pink piggies? Sorry, but I'm not going to "Add the app" to find out. And aren't we long past the heyday of "Space Invaders" anyway?

The other "cool" McCain application is "Campaign Cribs: Straight Talk Express" Um, I suppose this was inspired by the MTV series, but it comes off as "look how young and hip we are," especially since the heyday of MTV Cribs was more than 5 years ago, right?

It is also interesting that while Obama has over 1,000,000 FB Supporters, McCain has a little more than 140,000.

I am Aware of all Internet Traditions

2008-06-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

R U Aware of All Internet Traditions?

2008-06-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

Demolition of ESB @ UT Austin

2008-06-19T17:57:00.001-07:00

Click on the pictures below to get a really good view!

The Experimental Sciences Building at UT Austin is being demolished this summer. Apparently tearing it down and rebuilding it was more cost and time effective than the extensive renovation it would need. It's sad in a way because there were the names of various scientists inscribed just below the roofline of the building interspersed with beautiful carvings & medallions (one carving is right above this paragraph.) There were also a couple of beautiful meeting rooms -- one with gorgeous wood paneling (and I'm not a bit wood paneling fan) and a display of wood from all over the world.

As this progresses, I'll post a few more pictures. They have a water cannon spewing water to keep the dust down. The rebar on the building is awesome, too -- a big hunk of the roof (with red tiles still attached) about 20' long was hanging from the top story by a number of rebar cables, and I thought, "That building doesn't want to come down easily, does it." Sigh.

Click on the title for an 8 minute time elapsed video of the demolition (I just fast forwarded through most of it -- it's a good view of the building from before they started the exterior work until this week.)

Obama a Muslim ?

2008-06-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Click on the title to fight the smears.

And what if he were?

Pfleger: Bully in the Pulpit

2008-05-30T11:55:00.001-07:00

There was another sermon given at Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ the same day as Father Pfleger's. Why hasn't FauxNews put snippets of the sermon given by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite on their endless loop? Perhaps it doesn't reinforce their propaganda?

"Father Pfleger, as America now knows, preached a very different message on race, one I greatly resent.We in the United Church of Christ are trying to have what we call “A Sacred Conversation on Race” and I did not find Pfleger’s sermon to represent what we in the UCC are trying to do in having a sacred conversation."

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November 2008 Presidential Ballot

2008-05-26T10:19:00.001-07:00

A nightmare I had this weekend after hearing that Barr is the Libertarian presidential candidate and reading comments from supporters of Clinton who said they would write in her name in the fall if she doesn't earn the Democratic nomination:

Candidate Party

McCain:      Republican

Obama:     Democratic

Barr:             Libertarian

Clinton:      Independent

Even if there were only three of the above in the race (McCain, Barr, Clinton) or (McCain, Barr, Obama), it might be possible that none of the candidates would get the 270 electoral votes needed, and the election would then end up in the House.

It's going to be an interesting summer (and fall.)

Texas Board Denies Online Creationism "Master of Science"

2008-04-24T20:28:00.001-07:00

Following up on a similar "no" vote, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has turned down a request by the Institute of Creation Research to offer an online Master of Science Degree. (The vote yesterday was done by just a subcommittee of the board, and today's vote was by the entire board. We were pretty sure that the whole Board would vote against the proposal, but you never know what weird things can happen overnight.)

This struggle is never ending, though -- this year, high school biology books are up for review, and a majority of TX SBOE members favor the new creationism/creation science/intelligent design flavor, "Teach the Controversy," which means, "Teach our particular interpretation of the bible, and never mind that we are skipping some important steps that every other hypothesis has to go through on its way to being taught as a theory in schools: Research, Peer Review, Scientific Consensus, etc."

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Texas higher education board rejects creation science degree

2008-04-23T13:55:00.001-07:00

This is a follow up to something I just posted.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board rejected the Institute for Creation Research's proposal to offer a master's degree in science education, claiming that the degree would not prepare teachers to teach evolution. The ruling raises the question if current degree programs prepare teachers to give fair treatment to creation science.

I especially found this interesting:

The decision to turn down the proposal, subject to final action by the full board Thursday, came despite arguments from institute officials and faculty that teaching creationism to students would not hurt their future effectiveness as science teachers."

Yeah, right, being indoctrinated in pseudoscience won't hurt your effectiveness as a science teacher.

According to the article, the ICR also threatened legal action on free speech grounds. If the ICR wants to offer a graduate degree in Texas, and have it certified and/or accredited, all they need to do is label it accurately. I've put some suggestions in the post below this one.

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Another Setback for Creationism in Texas?

2008-04-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Details to follow, but I just got an email from someone who was at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Academic Excellence & Research, etc. Committee meeting today, and they have voted to accept the recommendation of Commissioner Paredes to deny certification for a Masters of Science Education program to be offered by the Institution for Creation Research.

The full board votes tomorrow, so unless they get "teh dumb" overnight, this is a setback for the ICR.

If they want certification in Texas, they might want to consider calling it a "Masters of Theology" or "Masters of Creationism", since it certainly isn't science.

Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed

2008-04-18T21:16:00.001-07:00

This is one of those occasions when parody is the best response.

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April 1 @ RLM

2008-04-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Our admin. associate, Colleen, made me take down the broken door signs this week after two math professors were flummoxed by them -- they wanted to come in to tell her that their sections of Number Theory in the fall would be taught via Moore Method, and they walked up to the door, looked at the signs, looked confused, walked away, saw students leaving the office, walked back to the door, stared at the door, and finally entered the office. Click on the title above to see the picture she took of our office doors.

Colleen wasn't too upset about the rest of the April 1 antics. (Actually, she was laughing about them most of the morning.) I stuck a mini sticky note that said "gotcha" at the bottom of her optical mouse; taped down the switch hook on the telephone so that when she picked the phone up it would still ring, joined all her paper clips together, etc. For the computer the faculty use, I moved the dock, opened up a couple of applications, took a screen shot, closed the applications, replaced the wallpaper with the screen shot, and hid the dock; however, after thinking about it for a bit, we decided that we should put the faculty computer back to normal, since we didn't think he could deal with it. (He's brilliant, but not that technologically savvy -- we can usually introduce him to one new change per year -- for example, when our note taking system migrated from a mainframe application to a web based one -- we would have been in trouble if they were to have also switched the registration system to the web at the same time.)

I am taking suggestions for next year in the comments section -- you really have to plan ahead a bit for these things.

Chris Comer was Expelled

2008-04-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

Ahh, shortly before 7 a.m. CDT, the real Expelled site was updated. Currently, a short video with Chris Comer's story is featured.

Why wasn't this real travesty of decency and justice mentioned in the movie Expelled?

John A. Wheeler, R.I.P.

2008-04-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

(Click on the title for the NYT obit.)

The auditorium classroom across from my office in RLM at UT is named after John Wheeler (he joined the faculty here in the late 1970s.) He coined the term "black hole", and science fiction would be a lot less interesting without his concepts such as the "many worlds" theory.

Expelled Exposed

2008-04-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Expelled Exposed, has the truth about the so-called "Expellees" of the movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." Please click on the title to visit their site.

I'd like to point out that (from what I've heard), "Expelled" does not discuss the science educators and administrators (such as Chris Comer of Texas) who have been reprimanded or fired for supporting science. Kenneth Miller alluded to several other cases when he spoke at UT recently -- I'll try to find some information about them to put in another post.

Dr. Kenneth Miller @ UT Austin: "God, Darwin, and Design: Lessons from the Dover Monkey Trial"

2008-04-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Miller, one of the witnesses for the plaintiffs in the Dover ID trial, gave an engaging SRO talk at UT Austin tonight. The webcast is already up, if you click on the title above. You'll need to download the Envivo plugin (and you need to have the most recent media player for your system) to view the webcast.

As the room filled up, I contrasted this event with the recent stealth screenings of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed -- where the Expelled audience was carefully vetted and screened to keep out undesirables, the "God, Darwin, and Design" talk was widely advertised and extra room was made for the overflow. (The room held 400 - 500, and they directed people to the classroom next door where they set up the webcast for viewing.) All were welcome, and the webcast had an international audience -- groups were set up all over for viewing, including Monterrey, Mexico and the UK.

The target audience for this talk (actually a series of outreach talks sponsored by UT's Environmental Sciences Institute) is K - 12 educators, and this comes at an opportune time for Texas since out SBOE is doing biology text reviews this year. During the Q & A period at the end, I asked if anyone had invited the TX SBOE, which got a laugh -- Miller said that he understood people could be fired for forwarding emails about talks on evolution. (I had actually meant to send the information about the talk on to my SBOE representative, Ken Mercer, and suggest that he attend, but I didn't get around to it.) Later I did see Chris Comer in the audience (the former Science Director for our state who actually was fired after she forwarded an "FYI" email announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest, another Dover ID witness.)

The contrasts with the ID crowd (if it can be said they have enough for a crowd) continued with Miller's points about how science deals with a new claim (1. research, 2. peer review, conferences, publishing, thrashing it out, which leads to 3. scientific consensus and then finally 4. the claims are included in classrooms and textbooks.) and what the IDers are demanding (going directly from the new claim to the classroom and textbooks without all the intervening steps that scientists take.)

Miller talked a bit about his experiences in the Dover trial -- I'll gloss over that, except for the fact that former PA Sentator Rick Santorum had nominated Judge Jones to his position (how did I not know that?!) The IDers must have felt that the fix was in when they drew Judge Jones.

He also gave some examples of evolutionary theory pwning ID/creationism/irreducible complexity. I've heard him talk about these in more detail in this video from a talk he gave at Case Western: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg It's 2 hours long, but he presents some very powerful evolutionary explanations and predictions. (bacterial flagellum, fused human chromosome #2, the dishonest presentation of the fish-to-amphibian fossil record in the ID/creationist book "Of Panda's and People", etc.

Tonight's talk was a little over an hour and fifteen minutes, but Miller is a very funny, engaging speaker. "Didn't these guys learn anything from the Nixon administration?!" (referring to the documents presented by the "Of Pandas and People" text creators to the Dover plaintiffs which were the nail in the coffin on the idea that ID is creationism and hence is religious teaching, not science.)

His view of Expelled is that the IDers need an explanation of why their ideas haven't caught on in the scientific community, and about the last straw they have is to conflate "Darwinism" to Nazism and other social ills. He said that we have to confront those errors with the facts every time we hear them. He also talked about reviewing Behe's new book -- twice -- and reports that Behe accepts the common ancestry of all beings, including humans, which is sure to be a disappointment to many IDers.

Another couple of funny anecdotes -- when he was on the Colbert Report, the only contact he had with Colbert was right before the show when Colbert said to him as he walked by, "Are you Miller? I'm gonna get you -- you're going DOWN!" Also, during the cold war, Miller was at a conference (either in E. Germany or someplace with some E. German scientists) -- I swear, the beginning of this anecdote was the only time my mind wandered -- and when one of the Germans left to go to the rest room, Miller turned to the other scientists and said, "Um, you know, that guy really isn't very smart," and the other Germans said, "Oh, him? His not a SCIENTIST -- he's Stasi!" (apparently, that's the only way the E. Germans would let their scientists hang with our scientists.)

And of course, because Miller is a theist -- Catholic to be exact -- he discussed how one can be a believer and accept evolutionary theory, and how accepting evolution does not necessarily lead to atheism. True enough, although in the case of this writer, accepting evolutionary theory did make it possible for me to be a non-believer, and it would be dishonest of me to say that this aspect of my education didn't have an effect on my beliefs. Of course, every aspect of my education eventually led me to non-belief, so I don't think the IDers should just pick on biology!

Expelled Contest

2008-03-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Expelled! The Movie is sponsoring a contest to see who has been the most persecuted by those evil evolutionists:

MOVIE CONTEST
Ever sat in class and had your professor straight up challenge your intelligence for suggesting even the possibility of an intelligent design in the universe?
Tired of being labeled merely for questioning aspects of the Darwinian theory of evolution? Ever been scoffed at or ridiculed in front of your peers?
Well, here’s your opportunity to tell your story on our Website AND possibly be in the movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Tell the world some of the outrageous things your professors say about your questions.
You and your story just might be chosen by our producers to be in the film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Let your voice be heard!
*Only submissions that meet our above requirements will be published.

I'm not sure the designers of this contest realize that this runs both ways, since I've heard plenty of anecdotes of teachers and other students inappropriately bringing their religion into the classroom. For example, when my husband was in the Salt Lake City public school system, things got so bad that his parents sent him and his brother to a Catholic school so they could get away from the religious proseltyzing. His brother came home crying one day because his best friend said he could no longer play with him since they (my husband's family) weren't LDS.

So, if you have such an example, I'd encourage you to click on the above link and share your story with the Expelled crew. I already saw an entry by a student whose English teacher informed him that "God created the universe" when he submitted a paper on the Big Bang.

Does anyone know if Expelled features Chris Comer, the former Texas director of Science Education who was asked to resign after forwarding an announcement of a lecture given by Barbara Forrest about her experience as a witness in the Dover, PA "Intelligent Design" trial? (Gee, you'd think that the TX SBOE would be more than a little bit curious about this subject, since they would love to introduce ID in our classrooms here, but apparently they aren't.) Also, this is just a rhetorical question, since I'm almost certain they didn't mention it.

UPDATE

I checked the link this morning, and the contest is now over -- long before the stated closing date in the official rules (although I'm sure they had a provision that they could close the contest at any time.) You can still read the entries and see some video clips.

OMFSM! The Expelling of PZ from Expelled Hits the NYT

2008-03-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

For the life of me, I can't understand why the producers of the movie criticized PZ for his view of the movie because he hadn't seen it, but then when he tries to see it, they kick him out?

What are they afraid of?

If their evidence is so strong, you would think they'd want to get it out there pronto!