ANWR: In Perspective

In all the arguments about high gas prices and whether it's the fault of the Republicans or Democrats, one of the solutions being put forth is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Take a look at this graph and try to decide whether it's going to have a big effect on anything:

Energy independence, it ain't.

UPDATE: I posted this same graphic at Illinipundit, because I figured it's Republicans that seem to be pushing the ANWR drilling, so that crowd might be interested. Instead of interest, all I got was "Liberals are teh suck!" OK, so I'm naive.

Local yokel disproves evolution?

No, just kidding. There was a letter to the editor in the News-Gazette the other day that was just so stunningly arrogant, misled, and flat-out wrong, that I couldn't resist responding here. Mr. Justin Bleich of Gibson City writes:

It has been proven many times that creationists appeal to the facts of science to support their view, while evolutionists appeal to the philosophical assumptions from outside science.

Creationists appeal to the facts of science? Um ... really? Maybe it's been proven in your Bible study group, Mr. Bleich, but among rational people, that's a load of hooey. Take this load of "proofs" for the existence of God. Go take a look through the literature sometime. You'll find lots of experiments, data, photographs, even. You won't find many creationists doing the same because they have no experiments. They have no data. They can only appeal to the ignorance and gullibility in their listeners and their religious beliefs.

When it has been proven that energy cannot be created or destroyed, how in the world would a single-celled organism, by chance, appear from nothing and eventually evolve into a multi-celled organism, like a fish?

What? Unless these single-celled organisms have internal fusion reactors, the creation or destruction of energy has nothing to do with evolution.

How, also, would this fish then evolve into a lion? Humans were not yet here to prove this.

I can't even tell if he's arguing that fish couldn't evolve into tetrapods like Tiktaalik because humans weren't around, or if he's arguing that if humans weren't around, nothing can be "proven." The latter, of course, would mean we can't know anything about astrophysics, geology, or who really built the Pyramids. After all, were you there? Did you know that it wasn't aliens with tractor beams coming out of their flying saucers?

Evolutionary scientists often use their assumptions to formulate the idea that nonliving organisms gave life to living organisms, and humans came from apes.

Um, huh? I'd love to find one of those "nonliving organisms" someday. I guess in his own incoherent way, Mr. Bleich is talking about abiogenesis, which has nothing to do with evolution.

Humans didn't evolve from apes! God, have these people learned nothing since the Scopes Monkey Trials? Mr. Bleich's assignment is to write "Humans and apes diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. One did not evolve from the other" one hundred times or until his crayon runs out.

Creation scientists have just as much right to our opinion as do evolutionary scientists.

No one is saying that creation scientists don't have their right to their opinion. Christian Scientists and modern geocentrists have the right to their opinion, too. They don't have the right to demand their weird beliefs taught in science classes as science.

The fact that rank ignorance survives even in this day and age frightens me. People like Mr. Bleich really want to drag us down back into the Dark Ages. And while he and his religious brethren are being so smug and self-righteous about their Godly beliefs, the rest of the world is going to pass us by in scientific knowledge.

My sympathies

I've given News-Gazette blogger Rhonda Robinson some crap over the years, but I'd like to offer my sympathies over the recent accidental death of her son.

Inconvenient ellipses

I was looking at the local Freecycle group, and noticed that this message had been posted, saying that something previously offered was no longer available. I do hope it's incomplete. (Click to embiggen.)

Something to look forward to for the next six months

I'm glad Obama got the nomination. I think he stands a pretty good chance at winning. But for the next six months (and possibly longer after that) don't expect to hear him referred to by a lot of Republicans as anything other than Barack Hussein Obama. They are going to push it relentlessly. You won't hear them refer to John Sidney McCain, however. The reasons are obvious. Racism and xenophobia. It's happening locally and at the national level.

I disagree with him on a number of issues, but Glock21 has a great post about the phenomenon.

... his name is pretty irrelevant beyond "branding" that has become such an important part of American politics. People who try to exploit that are essentially kowtowing to the worst of our society in order to win an election, and that's pretty disgusting no matter how much one wants to claim two wrongs make a right. If you don't want to be associated with the racist and prejudiced nimrods that flock to such childish reasoning when they go the ballot booth... stop using their arguments.

My God, it's full of torture!

Various people have testified in front of Congress that it's OK that we waterboard, because we've only done it to three people, and they were the worst of the worst. Well, it looks like those officials may have been "bending the truth" a bit.

A German-born Turkish citizen ... said that in 2002 in Afghanistan, U.S. interrogators subjected him to beatings, electrical shocks and, on one occasion, a technique he said was referred to as "water treatment." He said his head was held under water in a bucket while he was punched in the stomach, forcing him to inhale. On another occasion, he was hung by his arms for five days, he said.

Republicans have constantly been downplaying the extent of the torture we've been committing by referring to waterboarding as a "swimming lesson" and trivializing the pain that's caused by stress position techniques. Now we find they may have been lying all along as to the extent.

It gets even more Kafkaesque. The guy in the above passage was completely innocent of all terrorism charges. US officials even knew he was innocent, held him anyway, and it still took a personal appeal from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to get them to let him go. Think about that. It took an appeal from a head of state of one of our allies to get the US to free a torture victim from detention.

And to make matters even worse, a UK human rights group has accused the US of using ships to detain and secretly interrogate prisoners.

A British human rights organization claimed Monday that the United States had used military ships to secretly detain and interrogate terrorism suspects. U.S. officials denied using ship as prisons.

I imagine any US Navy vessel holding a prisoner would be subject to US military law. But what about a Halliburton-owned ship, in international waters, crewed by civilian contractors, registered in say, Liberia?

Brokeback Island

First there was Brokeback to the Future. Then there was Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback. Then there were a whole lot of others and the joke got old. But this is pretty good:

I can't decide if I like this one better:

Hat tip: David.

Charity suggestions

Most of us are about to get a fairly hefty check from the government as an "economic stimulus." Personally, I think they money could have been better spent on, say, a major public works project in New Orleans, but hey, you work with the economy you have, not the one you'd have had if Gore had been elected you wish you had.

So my options are pretty much: save it, spend it, or give it away. I could save it, sure. Spending it means basically buying stuff made in China. So I'm thinking about giving a big chunk of it away, but I'm not sure where to. Can anyone suggest any worthy charities?

On the other hand, I'm also thinking about buying a Wii.

UPDATE: I guess I should have said some of the charities I had in mind already. My list now includes: Human Rights Campaign, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, The Wounded Warriors Project, America's Second Harvest, Planned Parenthood, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, the Democratic National Committee, and probably one or two others I can't think of right now. I think two or three, at most, is what I need to decide on. Thanks for your suggestions.

Calm down, the queer sky is not falling

Glenn Greenwald has an insightful-as-usual post up about the California gay marriage ruling. He basically points out that the CA Supreme Court's recent ruling basically requiring CA's civil unions to be now made equal marriages is fully in accordance with CA law and the state constitution. His points are:

1. As the court found, this ruling must be based on California law and the California Constitution, not whether or not you think gay marriage in CA should or should not be legal
2. This ruling is not in violation of the "will of the people." He points out that the CA legislature has, not once, but twice approved a gay marriage bill vetoed by the governor, who said that the issue must be settled by the CA Supreme Court.
3. The ruling doesn't legalize gay marriage. It just says that separate-but-equal civil unions are unconstitutional.
4. Lastly, he predicts all sort of ignorant and hystical political overreaction to this ruling from the right-wingnuts.

So, let's look for the hysteria.

World Nut Daily quoting some hate-filled preacher:

Now activist judges are overruling the will of the people...

Of course, to get to the really good stuff, you have to head over to Free Republic:

Queerly beloved in the land of fruit, nuts and cereal.

Sodom, Gomorrah and Kalifornia too!

I’d say the odds of the Next “ Big One “ just shot off the charts..

We need a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution to end this judicial tyranny.

I’m going to marry my gun and take it everywhere I go.

And that's not the bad stuff. These people really have a fascination with bestiality and incest:

And now you can marry the Sheep of your choice, because to prohibit such would of course be a violation of your right to Equal Protection of the Laws.

There is no argument for gay marriage that does not equally support marriage between two people who are already related by blood.

If the legislature now strikes “between a man and a woman” and does not replace it with something like “between one human and another” things will get interesting.

remember their argum,ent is they love each other ... well you can love a sheep

so by that logic marriage could be anything people marrying animals, as what as happened elsewhere in the world namely India [WTF?] we can have more than one wife or husband Kids as young 5 could get married

That's from the first 100 postings on Free Republic. There are over five hundred more. Republicans disgust me. I'm going to go shower now.

Our Brave New World x3

The things that are happening around us, in our names, are just becoming too numerous to even pay attention to. So here are just three things I think are important enough you should pay attention to:

1) On being ashamed of one's country at Balkanization: An innocent Italian man is disappeared into our new immigration obliettes.

2) Attempt at Show Trials--US Military--And Why it Failed also at Balkinization: The (a?) Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo military tribunals had to resign in protest at the political maneuvering and manipulation of the process. The judge had to remove one of the Legal Advisors from the case and ordered the DoD not to persecute any of the prosecuters for objecting to his manipulations.

3) Lastly, Glenn Greenwald links to a briefing given to the Pentagon's TV military analysts about abuses witnessed by the FBI at Guantanamo:

In GTMO, that translated into ... strip search[es] for control measures and he was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash.

Christ. What the fuck is this country coming to?

It's only a matter of time

Just how long do you think it will be before some preacher somewhere attributes the Myanmar cyclone and the Chinese earthquake to some sin or another, or the fact that those countries are not primarily Christian? I give it maybe a week.

Weird emails

I occasionally get misdirected emails. My name is a combination of a fairly common first and last one, so people often mistype what they meant and get me. This is one of the weirder ones I've gotten lately.

To: me
Subject: AK-47

This is X, if you dont have my email address. So im starting to think about accesorizing my AK. When you come home before graduation can you help me take it apart and clean everything on it? I havent even done that yet. I know and can see that there are not very many parts to it but I dont know much about it and dont want to screw anything up on it.

I just hope me posting this email doesn't make him angry. After all, I know he's armed.

Interesting TV watching

Via Ex-Gay Watch, I see 20/20 updates a show they did previously by examine how people react to public displays of affection -- by gay people. According to EGW, "The setting is NJ for lesbian wives and Alabama for a gay couple. Guess where the 911 call happens."

That this is happening on the Day of Silence just can't be a coincidence. Appropriate timing.

My five

The mighty Gamera tagged me with this a while ago and I'm just now getting around to it. So here are five facts about myself:

five things:

1. I really hate tomatoes. When raw, anyway. It's something about the texture, I think. Cooked, I have no objection. Which is odd, since I have a friend who hates cooked tomatoes in any form, but has no objection to raw ones. I think I'm learning to like olives (except for those nasty things that come on frozen pizza), but tomatoes are more of a challenge.

2. I don't like California. There's nothing actually wrong with it; something about it just grates on me the wrong way. Maybe it's the fact that the weather is always insufferably perfect, or that they don't always number their highway exits. Or maybe it's that there are just so damn many people everywhere. We always joke that Champaign-Urbana is a city surrounded by a sea of corn, but in Southern California, you're always in a suburb surrounded by an sea of more suburbs.

3. I'm terrified to fly. It used to be that I didn't mind it at all, then became gradually worse. And now I can't really get on a plane at all. It's getting affecting where I look for jobs, even. I probably should do something about it, but not dealing with the problem is always easier than doing something about it.

4. When I was a freshman in college, I dislocated my kneecap while playing racquetball. (The really embarrassing part is that I was playing alone.) Two years later, I slipped on some wet concrete, fell down and either dislocated it again or wrenched it badly. I wound up having surgery on it a year later. It's better; I can go up stairs without it sounding like I have a ratchet in my pants, but getting up from a squatting position can be distinctly uncomfortable.

5. There are only four interesting things about me. Yes, I know this is a total cop-out, but I really cant think of anything else.

Since all the bloggers I know have done this already I'm going to tag PZ Myers, Atrios, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Tobias, and Dr. Fig. People, of which, only one reads this blog. See if you can figure out which. One of these things is not like the other...

Champaign County Computer & Electronics Recycling Event

This is short notice, but there will be an electronics recycling event tomorrow, Saturday, April 19, from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm. It looks like they're taking all sort of electronics, with a small charge for televisions. Here's the flyer.

This is what happens when you put two scientists in a room together

We have a new staff member starting at work soon. He is looking for an apartment. Another colleague recently went through a series of apartments looking for one that he found accessible and I suggested he might be able to share some of what he learned. We got into this discussion and it came up that it seemed the farther you get from campus, the better the apartments became. Somehow, paper and a pencil was involved and this sketch happened:

I think the fact that the "optimum distance to campus" is given in metric units just ices the cake.

I am not your mother!

Alright, people, listen up! When you have finished with a pair of rubber gloves, you take them off and throw them away. What you do not do is leave them lying around on the nearest work surface looking like the shed skin of some dismembered, purple, reptilian hand. I also don't appreciate you leaving them inside out, with your nasty sweat and germs all over the surface I have to touch in order to throw them away.

This has been an announcement from the Eeeewmergency Broadcast System.

Open news, insert frame

The more I pay attention, it seems like the more I notice that media narratives are always forced into a particular frame. Any science story about computers involves artificial intelligence or how many times the Library of Congress would fit in a new storage device. People that go missing are almost always female, white, young, and attractive. Really, when was the last time a media cycle fixated on a missing African-American woman?

Politics is especially bad. Lately we've heard tons about Obama's un-American preacher and Hillary's Bosnian misremberances. Really, could you tell me how John Edwards's health care policy would differ from anyone else's. I bet, however, you could tell me how much he paid for the famous haircut.

And it's still happening. Glenn Greenwald points out:

One other point to note about all of this is that these fixations are as skewed as they are vapid. Barack Obama is an exotic elitist freak because he went to Harvard Law School and made $1 million from his book. Hillary Clinton can't possibly have any connection to the Regular Folk because her husband, who grew up dirt poor, became quite wealthy after being President. John Kerry was completely removed from the concerns of the Regular People because his second wife was rich.

By contrast, George W. Bush was a down-home, salt-of-the-earth Man of the People despite being the grandson of a U.S. Senator, the son of a President (who greatly magnified his riches in his post-presidency), and the by-product of an extremely wealthy, coddled life. Ronald Reagan was pure Americana despite spending most of his adult life as a very wealthy Hollywood actor (and converting his post-presidency into far greater riches still). And John McCain is as Regular a Guy as it gets, even though he dumped his first wife (the mother of his three children) after she was disfigured and disabled by a near-fatal car accident so that he could marry his much younger, much prettier, and extremely wealthy heiress-mistress, whose family riches then launched his political career and sustained a life of luxury for almost three decades (that's how McCain's rustic "Sedona cabin" -- i.e., his sprawling compound -- came to be).

It would be bad enough if our political press were obsessed with such trivialities. The fact that they do so in such a Republican-leader-worshiping manner makes it only that much worse, particularly given that it's this dynamic, more than anything else, that determines the outcome of our elections.

I imagine nothing is going to change about this any time soon. The Republican candidate will always be a cowboy "man of the people" while the Democrat will be a latte-drinking, elitist Frenchman.

Now all I need are the butcher and the candlestick maker

Because moon-grrl asked so nicely, here's an update on my foray into the world of baking with Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day:

It really is every bit as easy as the book suggests. It's a matter of 10-15 minutes to mix the ingredients and you're touching the dough to shape it for 5 minutes, max. I'll photoblog better next time I do this and believe me, there will be a next time.

This whole thing started from a The Splendid Table podcast episode. You can listen to that episode here.

(Weird fact. When you do a Technorati search for "Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day," one of the blogs that pops up on the first page of searches is "My Penile Enlargement Reviews." Seriously.)

How much incompetence is enough?

The "liberal" media is largely ignoring this recent story about McCain saying Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists. He's wrong, of course, since Iran is largely Shia and Al Qaeda is basically a Sunni movement.

The McCain campaign is trying to pass this off as a "slip of the tongue" sort of thing. Saying "Shia" when you mean "Shiite" now and then is understandable, I suppose. This clearly wasn't just a simple mistake. McCain has said this exact same thing on at least four different occasions. His campaign has even been using this point in its literature.

I just want to point out how, not wrong, but stunningly wrong he is here. Even I knew the moment I heard that, that something wasn't right. That's sort of analogous to getting the Chinese and the Japanese mixed up during WWII, or maybe the Germans and the Russians.

OK, I get that the difference between "Sunni" and "Shiite" is confusing, but the guy is running to be head of the military during a war! It you cant tell Pakistan from the Taliban, it seems to me you lack one of the basic qualifications for the job.

The so-called liberal media is all but ignoring this. There was a smattering of coverage, then the spin began. It seems the party line is that he "misspoke." This wasn't a slip of the tongue. This wasn't him just meaning one word and saying another. As Glenn Greenwald points out, McCain has been making this same error, consistently, for days. The only reasonable explanations to me are that he genuinely doesn't understand that the Iraqi insurgents are not mainly Al Qaeda, or that he is attempting to perpetuate the myth that the Iraq war has something to do with 9/11 by conflating Al Qaeda with native-Iraq hostiles.

Whether it is honest incompetence or genuine malfeasance, it does not bode well for a McCain presidency.

(Update to get my own Shia/Sunni labels correct. Good thing I'm not running for President.)