Back in 2003, a T. Rex femur was found to have preserved soft tissue - a first in a fossil. That first has lead to another, the first protein analysis of dinosaur tissue. The results, T. Rex was a lot like a chicken.

Full article on Clucker Rex here.

As an armchair paleontologist, I’m thrilled with just this fragment of information. It is one more tiny bit of evidence linking therapods with birds.

After careful, painstaking research (read as, five second Google search,) the crack science team at Satan’s Brothel (now Satan’s Garden) has found perhaps the most definitive video yet, describing the nature and dangers of Global Warming.

(Note: YouTube has deleted the video. I’m still looking for the clip.)

Hide your thermometers people!

A CBC documentary on Global Warming, in five parts. Not the view Al Gore wants to hear.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

It’s computer models versus actual data. I’ll go with the actual data, thank you.

A famous photograph, seen in newspapers around the world and touted by Al Gore in his smarmy presentations on Global Warming - has been found to have been used to perpetrate a hoax.

In short, this photo has been used as a visual aid to preach the dangers of Global Warming by plucking at people’s heart strings, when in fact the photograph was taken in August, near shore, just off the edge of the ice cap, when the ice is always melting this way.

The full Media Watch story is here.

I can’t say that I’m surprised. It is obvious to anyone looking closely, that leftest socialists - who would like nothing more than to impose controls on just about anything they can get their hands on - are using the Global Warming hype for their calculated manipulations of societal attitudes, in order to push their political agenda. I can’t remember who said it off hand and memory forces me to paraphrase, “Freeze or fry, the solution is always the same: destroy the free market and impose socialism.” (If anyone has the proper attribution for this quote, please pipe up and I’ll give due credit.)

The data points to the world currently heating up, but I have yet to be convinced that it is human activity that is causing it. I give it a possibility, but I certainly don’t see that anyone has proved whether CO2 levels are a correlation or a causation, nor that our minute emissions of CO2 compared to nature are having that much of an impact. The temperature trend also doesn’t look like anything out of the normal rise and fall of temperatures over the last few millennium, so I’m not in any great panic over a 100 year trend of 2.5C increase.

Temperatures were 15-20C higher on average, for about 650 million years from the Devonian to Cretaceous periods, and life flourished! The entire planet was one big tropical jungle. There were no polar caps. It took an asteroid strike large enough to wipe out 90% of all life on Earth, to change the temperature trend. Hot is not a problem for life. Ice ages, on the other hand…

Why we’re not more concerned with breathing clean air, drinking clean water and preventing corporations from running rough shod over the environment, for the sake of simple preservation of wildlife and flora, is beyond me. These are known, measurable issues, which don’t rely on unreliable computer models or haphazard speculation.

In any case, and back to the point; having to lie to push an agenda, does not put the agenda in a good light.

Christianity in the United States appears to have some seemingly messed up stigmas concerning sex, left over from the Puritan nut cases who escaped to here from Europe.

From the abject horror of being exposed to women’s nipples, right down to the hellish fear of seeing anything below the belt, the American Christian should be an endangered species. After all, no child is born believing in God, they have to be taught to do so. Hence, aside from adult converts, Christianity depends on familial population increases. The Catholic and Mormon variants certainly strive for this goal.

So, perhaps their workshops and publications, preaching the sins and dangers of pornography, are simply steps to ensure that no sperm is wasted in the grand design of Christian population expansion. Their unwavering support for (Christian) adoption is certainly related. Even the advent of circumcision as the norm in the United States, is based more on Christian attempts to reduce the potential for masturbation, than any health benefits. Frankly, all the evidence seems to point that there are no health benefits to circumcision, in spite of the old school medical beliefs.

Whether it is admitted or not, the loss of potential flock is the main portion of the reason that many Christians get so upset over the subject of porn, taken hand-in-hand with masturbation. Sex is evil, unless it is used to make more Christians. (This is their hidden fear over same-sex marriage and a slew of other related topics. Christians like to spout off over the “sanctity of marriage,” as if they invented it. Hint: they didn’t.)

This is also the root of their fear of abortion. Articles like Zygotes and Embryos are People stress that such cells are fully a human being, because the human soul is present from the moment of conception. They hence equate an abortion with murder, and heap upon that zygote their unjustified fear for its immortal soul. Some go so far as to claim the same sin when using birth control. They base these ideas completely on their holy text, ignoring science. They have to ignore science, because science can’t find evidence for a soul, let alone God - and a clump of snot is more complex biologically than a zygote.

The debate ultimately boils down to those who would protect a fertilized cell due to unsupported conjecture, taken from ancient, anonymous writings; against those who attempt to understand the biological nature of the situation and make moral judgment based on actual capability of the organism to a given stage of development.

This deadlock leads to some rather pointless arguments. As an example, the famous argument of, “You could be preventing the next Einstein!” Usually countered with, “…or the next Hitler.” Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Either is completely unsupported speculation, with no method of determining likelihood. The argument is stupid and unproductive.

The real argument at hand, is a pointed question for the Christians; “What makes you think that your beliefs, utterly devoid of evidentness, are even worth contemplation?” The simple fact of the matter is, without objective, scientific merit; basing legality of abortion on the Christian argument is a violation of the First Amendment, as it embroils religion with the state. This is the crux of “Roe vs. Wade.”

Personally, I have a follow up question, in our over-populated world, “Why do you insist on breeding?” Once the selfish reasons for the process are exposed, the Christian breeding dogma becomes a bit ugly. “Breed to succeed,” is not an enlightened stance.

When the anti-abortionist’s argument boils down to, “the zygote has a soul!” the stance is without substance from the beginning. Prove that the soul exists, then we’ll talk. Christians don’t even have the tiniest shred of evidence for the existence of the human soul, but they have a whole dogma of beliefs surrounding it, beliefs that they are more than willing to force unto others. The abortion debate is more about Christians pushing their beliefs unto others, than any real concern over the people involved in these heart wrenching decisions.

So, the abortion debate will continue as long as intangible bullshit is allowed to have say in legal decisions.

It truly is a statement on how geeky the entire computer industry is, when you think that it’s been over twenty years now since IBM compatible PC’s and Apple Macintosh’s hit the market - yet Mac vs. PC religious wars still rage.

I was watching a series of parodies on the current line of Macintosh commercials on TV, such as:

Pretty good work, but for the love of all things beautiful, ignore the comments. It’s a joke, you morons. Get a life. “Mac is God’s gift to premature ejaculation and PC’s give you cancer!” “PC’s make my foot warts disappear, while Mac’s give me jock itch!” “Linux allows you to create wormholes to other galaxies using ordinary PC hardware and empty toilet paper rolls, while Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ!” “Britney Spears uses a Macintosh because it gives her great camel toe!”

Enough already!

I’m a Unix fan because I like the underlying design and the tools available. I think I’d go a little bit nuts doing data reformatting without the ability to pipe, redirect and tee data streams. That said, I thought this “Linux” character was damn funny and pretty much spot on for some of the propeller heads I’ve run into.

It’s a joke, people - stop whoring yourself to a brand, already.

Just when I was getting my knickers in a twist over the Iranian hostage situation, Iran does a double-take and decides to release the British captives.

Guardian article on the event.

The British hostage situation in Iran is making me very tense.

I don’t want to speculate on why those soldiers were where they were, nor do I want to speculate on the intent of those who sent them. However, my concern is in the outcome, in that we have a hostage situation, with the hostages being citizens of one of the two countries who were the key to starting the war in Iraq.

Bush is itching for an excuse to attack. Unconfirmed reports supposedly from Russian intelligence, say that there are US troops massing on the border. Two carrier fleets sit in the Gulf, with a third on the way. This has all the makings of a Tom Clancy war epoch, but real people are going to be dying if this explodes.

I have made three wrong predictions before to friends on the time frame for the US invasion of Iran, so I will refrain from making a further fool of myself than I already have. I am convinced, however, that our current administration wants this Middle Eastern war to expand and will use any pretense it can find, perhaps even manufacture one, to wage war with Iran. I know for many that thought is a very bitter pill to stomach, but the fact is that our government has pulled that kind of charade before to engage in war and our current administration is arguably the most corrupt we’ve suffered to date. That is not a happy combination of probability.

For now we wait and hope for the best. My suspicions, however, are that things will escalate and this war will continue to spread. I’d brace for a draft if it does.

Does anyone write anymore?

My drivel is utter garbage, with enough punctuation, grammatical and spelling errors to make my High School English teacher warm up her cattle prod. (I wish she had warmed up her cattle prod back then, but such is a lurid fantasy best kept under wraps these decades later.) It seems to me that what passes for “well written” these days is beyond abysmal.

Take for example, my eldest stepson. He’s a nice young man, rather intelligent and finishing his BS in genetic biology. I had the honor (read as “maggot choking misfortune”) of being begged to proofread the final submission for his thesis. Personally, I don’t know a damned thing about yFAST complexes and Mec1 relations to the ATR mechanism, but I do know that when your sentence changes tense three times - with none of these tenses matching - you have a serious problem. Irony holds that it’s probably genetic.

Sending the boy to a geeky engineering college likely didn’t help matters. They stress the sciences and ignore the more banal issues of life, such as personal hygiene and eating. Sending him to public school in Utah most certainly did not help. The public school system here is very low grade. I may be biased in that my schooling in the 70’s and early 80’s was in Minnesota, a state which has always prided itself in funding education. This also helps to explain the draconian tax rates in this winter wonderland, but that is another issue.

Whereas I should continue with a story about walking the thirty miles to school each day in twenty feet of snow, with my dad strapping bacon to my ass to make the wolves chase me faster when I was running late; I will instead resort to a snide comment on how little work I’ve seen issued in school to foster functional writing skills. My youngest stepson, about to graduate from High School, has only written a handful of papers for senior Advanced Placement (AP) English. Perhaps my memory has been skewed with the advent of age and the languishing effects of nearly three decades of computer monitor radiation, but I seem to recall having to write a lot more than that.

I also don’t see the need for assignments which seem a little childish, or otherwise saccharine - especially when they’re aimed at me, rather than my child. My youngest came home with a sheet from English class a few weeks ago, which asked for parental participation in their reading assignment of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. In the letter, the teacher asked that the parents write a short note with sweet words of wisdom, gentle advice to give their child in preparation for life’s wonderful journey ahead; as Hamlet’s father had given to him. This reasoning, it was stated, was an attempt to “pull the child into the sentiment of the work”. That is a paraphrase. I don’t recall the actual wording, but it is fair to say that my insulin levels needed to be checked afterward.

My message was quick and easy to write and not wanting to kill a tree for it, I gave it to him verbally. “Trust no one.”

What examples I have seen of his written assignments have been horrid. It is obvious that I did not watch his education carefully enough and did not step in to correct the situation in time. The frightening part is that his papers earn good grades. If I had a time machine, I might have been able to help at the correct point. As it is, I’m encouraging him to concentrate on his writing skills when he heads off to a liberal arts college - even if it seems to be a futile gesture. Some of it will sink in.

Either that, or he’ll end up writing crap like this his whole life.

If you want to catch sparks in the wind these days, you need look no further than watching the cripple-fight between Rosie O’Donnell and Bill O’Reilly. I say cripple fight in the terms that if you were to mark the handicapped symbol on their car’s permit with red ink to indicate their malfunction, their heads would be a bright crimson dot.

On one side of this circus, you have Bill O’Reilly. Seriously, if anyone can find a better poster child for the type of intolerant horseshit that the far right represents, please tell me. I thought Rush Limbaugh was bad, but O’Reilly simply takes the cake for spewing nonsense with the air of authority. Add into that delightful mix; cutting the mic off from anyone he’s personally declared to be a terrorist sympathizer, or “America hater” because they don’t agree with him, yelling over the top of people as if being louder means that you’re correct, and parroting the same regurgitated spew every other far right monologue has uttered for weeks as if it was an O’riginal thought - and you get one ugly cake mix of pure bad. He’s also an arrogant son of a bitch, but that really dozen’t set him apart.

On the other side of this media maelstrom is Rosie O’Donnell. If anyone can find a better poster child of self-exalting blowhard, let me know. She’s loud, generally obnoxious and also likes to yell over the top of people as if being louder means that you’re correct. She likes to parrot the left wing regurgitation as much as O’Reilly does the right. She an arrogant daughter of a bitch…

But you get the picture. It’s deja vu, all over again.

The big controversy: Rosie O’Donnell has come out calling for “9/11 Truth”. This can mean a lot of things, but in her case she seems to be at least convinced that the government is not coming clean in telling everything it knows about 9/11 - to the point that she infers that they had something to do with it. Then she makes the predictable mistake of blathering about George Bush being Hitler’s evil twin, ad nausium.

O’Reilly, predictably, doesn’t see it this way and because Rosie has the audacity to say such a thing, she should be sent to Gitmo for the holiday season special. We’ll supply the batteries.

First thing: I don’t like Rosie. I don’t like Bill. They both suck rancid canal water and I could go the rest of my life without ever hearing their voices again. However, I have to give Bill an extra kick in the groin on this one, because even if you don’t agree with Rosie, she should have the right to say whatever she wants - and let the facts come out to show whether she was right or wrong. Calling for someone to be silenced because you don’t like what they’re saying, is not the American way. Something about a First Amendment?

Furthermore, the one thing that the far right has not done with Rosie O’Donnell, or Martin Sheen, or Dr. Steven E. Jones of Bringham Young University, and many, many others; is actually address their questions. Every effort is made to demonize them for even considering the idea that the official 9/11 report was a shoddy piece of bird cage lining, to calling them names, to hold them up as examples of Bad American’s(tm) - but not one tiny bit of effort goes into responding to some pretty fucking serious questions.

How does a steel building fail from fire, when the burning temperature of jet fuel is less than half of the melting point of steel? (Office furniture burns at an even lower temperature, for that matter.)

How does a steel building suffering core structural damage do so in such a way that it collapses just slightly longer in time than free fall?

How is it that Tower Seven, which wasn’t hit by any aircraft, falls the same way as the two which were?

How is it that similar, even worse, fires in the past have never produced any of these behaviors?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg…

I like that Rosie is stirring people up enough to start asking questions that some of us have had since the day the attack happened, but I would really, really like to have a better spokesperson for the job. I wonder if Clint Eastwood has any misgivings?

The subject is ultimately a serious one and deserves serious attention. You can find a slew of sites with a Google search for “9/11 truth”, which will have everything from reasoned timelines to conspiracy theories that space aliens used it as a distraction to try to kidnap Tom Cruise onto a Xenu slave barge.

I like to take the scientific route.

Start here and here. There are physicists and engineers, probing the problem with scientific analysis.

If you have eight months free, work your way up to visiting the most complete 9/11 time line on the net.

Others have said it, and I’ll repeat it: the idea that 19 Arabs, none with enough piloting skills to fly a Piper Cub, managed to high-jack four planes and properly navigate the aircraft to three of their targets; is the biggest conspiracy theory I’ve heard yet.