Via Crooks and Liars comes the news that Fred Phelps, the dangerously deranged fundamentalist nut, is protesting a talk by Mike Huckabee, the dangerously deranged fundamentalist nut.
Phelps is basically vermin, protesting funerals of soldiers because of his complete disconnect from reality. While real human emotions get riled needlessly and cruelly by him, he is relatively harmless beyond that — even the far-rightest of the far right ignores him. Huckabee, though, wants to change the Constitution to make it align better with the Bible. He’s a legitimate danger to this country, and the world.
Schadenfreude? Sure. But maybe this will shine a light on just how nuts this country has gotten since the far far Religious Right has put a stranglehold on one party’s politics. I tend to talk about their insane jihad against science, but they have much scarier and far-reaching goals. But now, they’re ready to detonate over McCain, and James Dobson has actually endorsed Huckabee.
I swear, you can’t make this stuff up. Remember, as I have said repeatedly here: if you are a religious citizen of the United States, it’s doubly important for you to protest these fringe people. I think the vast majority of religious people in this country are relatively moderate, but unless you speak up, these lunatics speak for you.
I sure hope that come November, this country can pull itself back from this nonsense and get to the business of actually being America again.
Very soon, I hope, I will be posting the be-all end-all debunking of the utter nonsense surrounding the idea that the year 2012 will bring disaster to us all… because the Mayan calendar ends then. Hint: it doesn’t. This is a total fabrication.
But until then, please read my friend Gia’s post on this silliness, which is one of the better debunkings of the 2012 nonsense I’ve seen.
From the Florida Citizens for Science page (you do have it in your RSS feed reader, right?) comes the news that the Board of Education of that state will hold a meeting on Monday February 11 where people can voice their concern over the state science standards. The meeting will have a live video feed.
If you are in Florida, and you like reality, then find out more and speak up! Counties across Florida have been falling like dominoes when it comes to the (potential) weakening of science standards.
Floridians! Take this opportunity to dedoomify yourselves!
Guillermo Gonzalez is an astronomer who thinks Intelligent Design creationism is a scientific theory. Iowa State University is an educational institution where he wanted to help spread such silliness. ISU is also a place that said Gonzalez could take his nonsense elsewhere, and denied him tenure.
Discovery Institute is a "think tank" full of people who like to lie and say that creationism is correct. They whined and moaned when ISU told Gonzalez to take a hike. Gonzalez appealed to ISU, hoping that they would be foolish enough to say "Golly, maybe we should throw hundreds of years of scientific discovery out the window!"
They didn’t. In a 7-1 decision they told Gonzalez that his hike can still be taken.
As I said before, that is 100% the correct decision. Tenure is given for many reasons, but one criterion is how well the candidate will represent the University. Supporting Intelligent Design would reflect very poorly on ISU. They know that, so they dumped him. Well that, plus a host of other problems they had with Gonzalez.
I’m sure the Disco ‘tute will have some sort of golden parachute to soften the blow to Dr. Gonzalez. But I hope that other institutes (the real kind) will look to ISU as an example of how to deal with a shoddy track record and science blinded by faith.
I am way behind on this, but it’s been a busy month. SETI is the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s a project by a phenomenally dedicated and brilliant group of scientists and engineers to search the sky for radio signals from other civilizations. I won’t go into the basis for this here (you can read their FAQ for all that), but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor.
One of their biggest problems is the sheer volume of data they generate. They probe the sky looking at a huge number of radio channels for a signal — imagine your car radio able to tune in to not 20 or 30 stations, but millions. Billions. That’s what they face.
Some very smart folks at Berkeley realized that home computers could be utilized to process some of that data, so they created SETI@Home. When you are not using your PC or Mac, the processor can be utilized to crunch through the SETI data, looking for that needle in a million haystacks: an intelligent signal (good luck finding one on your AM dial!).
This project has been going on for some time (search the BAUT forum for a discussions of it, including out own BA and UT team)
Right now, SETI is getting a surge of data because their main dish, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, got an upgrade. SETI@Home needs more computers!
So please sign up. It’s free, doesn’t hurt your computer in any way, and if your computer is the one that finds The Signal, then I imagine they’ll be happy to let you share the glory, too.
Update: Just to be clear, SETI@home is not a product of the SETI Institute; it’s an independent program out of UC Berkeley.
SETI is the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s a project by a phenomenally dedicated and brilliant group of scientists and engineers to search the sky for radio signals from other civilizations. I won’t go into the basis for this here (you can read 
