Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Hili: I’ve been reading that such stroking has a calming effect on humans.
A: You have nothing against it, do you?
Hili: On the contrary; I like to perform good deeds.
Hili: Czytałam, że takie głaskanie działa na człowieka uspokajająco.
Ja: Ale nie masz nic przeciwko temu?
Hili: Przeciwnie, lubię robić dobre uczynki.
From a tw**t by George Takei, whom many of you will recognize as the actor who played Sulu on Star Trek.
The billboard is an ad urging males to get medical tests to prevent serious problems later, and refers to ahrq.gov, the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a forum that disseminates medical information and survey results to the American public.
Ah, the humor that one wag with a spraycan can produce!
h/t: Grania
The Cold War has given place to the Social Media War. According to the Torygraph, the Russian deputy prime minister has started a pissing contest between Putin and Obama:
In a strange display of one upmanship, deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin posted a picture on his Twitter account of President Vladimir Putin petting a leopard next to one of Mr Obama holding a fluffy poodle, with the caption “we have different values and allies.”
The post, which was meant as a dig at the US President’s unequal manly status, was retweeted more than 600 times in two hours.
Here’s the Tw**t by Rogozon
The photo of the Russian head of state was taken during the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics last year, when Mr Putin visited endangered Persian leopards, while the Obama photo was reportedly taken while he was running for the Senate.
In an earlier tweet, Mr Rogozin posted a Youtube video about his country’s military might – a short history of the Russian-made Ural tank.
Putin clearly has masculinity issues, what with wrestling bears, riding bare-chested on a stallion, and other such stunts. But he’s still a thug, and he’s ruining his country: a country that once had a chance to become an enlightened democracy.
This is the last installment of VICE News’s unprecedented inside coverage of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The whole report can be seen in one go (42 minutes) here.
This episode is called “Bulldozing the border between Iraq and Syria,” and VICE gives a precis:
In the final installment of VICE News’ unprecedented look inside the Islamic State, reporter Medyan Dairieh journeys 200 miles from the the group’s power base in the Syrian city of Raqqa to the border with Iraq. There, after defeating the Iraqi army manning the checkpoint, Islamic State fighters work further tobulldoze the border.
As they clear apart a barrier that divided Iraq and Syria, Islamic State fighters declare an end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a nearly 100-year-old pact between France and Britain that divided up the Middle East. For now, that area between Iraq and Syria is part of a new territory: the Islamic State.
People objected to the title of Dawkins’s book The God Delusion, saying that it was a slur to call all those nice religious folks “deluded.” Well, maybe so (though I go back and forth on that), but if ever a group was subject to vicious mass delusion, it is these jihadis.
[JAC: Sorry, folks; I can’t stop the man. It’s a form of madness.]
by Matthew Cobb
This picture appeared on Tw*tter, taken by Matt Nicholson, aka @SharkyNichol, whose bio says “Marine biologist, ecologist, and conservationist. From #Miami, now an MSc student at Uni of Exeter”. His tw**t read: “Come try and find the camouflaging crabs #scienceinthesquare at the marine zone @UniofExeterESI”.
Now I’ll be honest with you, I can only see 1 ½ crabs (in other words, there’s one I’m sure of, and other that could be a crab). Matt said to me that he thinks there are 5 or 6. The one thing I am sure of is that there are neither nightjars nor killdeer in the tank.
“Boots on the ground” is today’s overused phrase. Why not simply “soldiers”? Or “troops”? This shopworn phrase is even longer than the simpler alternative. It serves only one purpose: to make someone look like they’re either politically or militarily in the know.
I can see it now—a report about Coachella or Burning Man that says, “There will be an estimated ten thousand Birkenstocks on the ground.”
And while we’re at it, what is this “on the ground” business? How many news stories do we see that say, “The facts on the ground are . . . “? Are there other kinds of facts, like facts in the air: perhaps the number of airplanes in combat?
Get off my lawn!
Twice the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has written to the Superintendent of Schools of the Lebanon, Missouri school district, and twice they have been met with silence. The FFRF’s complaint, you’ll recall, is about Lebanon High School Principal Kevin Lowery’s prayer at the last graduation—a prayer that clearly violated the First Amendment. Principal Lowery unofficially apologized for praying at a public-school function, but the proselytizing of Christianity at that school, and not just via graduation prayers, has apparently been going on for a long time. The FFRF wants it stopped, ergo the complaint.
Apparently the school board and superintendent of Lebanon thinks that if they just ignore the thing, it will blow over. But that’s not the way it works, and they really should know that. Their recalcitrance comes, I guess, from wanting to defiantly hold on to their religion, and from misguided notion that there’s really nothing wrong with broadcasting their faith all over the local school.
Well, the next step has been taken: the FFRF has written a kind of “discovery letter” to Lebanon, asking for information about the prayers and all exchanges between Lowery, the Superintendent, and the school board about the prayer. And these people have no choice but to answer this one: a response is required by law.
Here’s the FFRF’s letter, reproduced with permission. I figure that seeing all this will not only educate us about the tenacity with which certain Christians maintain their right to violate the Constitution, but also about how legal steps can be taken to build that church-state wall back up.
Click to enlarge:
My guess is that these people will respond that there were “no exchanges about the issue.” If they do that, they’d probably be lying, and they’d be in even bigger trouble.
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. The problem is that these people can’t distinguish between God and Caesar. And now, since they’ll have to consult a lawyer, it’s going to start costing them.