I don't find this amusing news but since we're on the subject...
Am I wrong to be increasingly frustrated? I have taken several upper-level courses in biology, and I know a good deal about genetics, ecology, and evolution. Am I wrong for being frustrated that people who have never taken a biology course in their life try to tell me that they know more about biology than me? That they have a deeper understanding of the processes surrounding speciation? I don't THINK that's intellectual elitism, as some might claim. I certainly wouldn't tell a priest that I know more about Christianity than he just because I don't believe his faith.
Sorry for the sudden outburst... I've had a lot of young-earth creationists around me lately and I've been dragged into trying (and failing, apparently) to show them how they have a lot of misconceptions about the scientific view of the diversity of life. But I'm still curious as to people's responses.
Yeeeah I don't even know what to say to this. I brought it up to my friends last night when we were all hanging out, and for us (most of us coming from Dallas or other big cities in Texas), we just laughed and said "Ohhh Texas... sometimes you're crazy as shit, but we love you anyway."
I've only ever come across a couple of people who are religious enough to openly admit that they don't believe certain things that it seems most everyone else accepts. I kind of pinned Waco as super super religious city, yet not ignorant type religious city. I was actually surprised to hear about the upbringing in Waco, but eh. I guess there are crazies everywhere in Texas.
Bill Nye made the mistake of putting himself in a big room full of them, and mentioning anything about the bible. "Oh no! He brought up the BIBLE with SCIENCE? I'll bet he's trying to say that the Bible is wrong!! Oh my god, he IS!! HOW DARE HE DO SUCH A THING!!"
I've been a little extra-sensitive to this topic myself lately. My brother became a born-again Christian several years ago, but within the last year I finally came to realize that he he is also a creationist. He accepts micro-evolution, including speciation, but not "kinds" turning into other "kinds", and he's rattled off a long list of refutations to dating the Earth; including rapid fossilization, carbon dating being based on the assumption that c-14 is constant in the atmosphere, something about humming bird fossils in Europe (I don't know), and just the standard assertions that scientists can't test evolution, so it isn't really science and all the stuff that contradicts the Bible isn't real science.
And now we have these dip-shits passing legislation based on their belief that facts can be ignored. I think there is very good cause to be frustrated.
What frustrates me the most is that when I try to actually explain where their misconceptions are.... they ignore it or they just don't get it. They assume that I'm just talking out my ass because they ... I don't know, don't have the mental faculty to understand it? I'm not sure, because I know a smart person who became a Christian in the past few years and even trying to explain the very basics of evolutionary theory totally stumped her. She said that she "just doesn't get it" and continues on her tirades against evolution. Is it THAT hard to understand, really? And can you really, honestly deny something that you just can't (or won't) understand?
I'm sensitive to it too, because as an American living abroad I am sensitive to the fact that other industrialized and educated nations look and laugh at us for challenging science that contradicts our magic book.
It's isn't elitism. You're the one who has educated yourself in the nature of the world around you. The people around us are the ones who have turned anti-intellectual and accused us of being too elite to join them in discarding science.
The crafty designers at Caztek Engineering have come up with an interesting new vehicle that combines a bar, bicycle and bus into one single supercar known as the City Cycle. Although we aren't sure where the idea of putting a bar onto a bus and then turning the bus into a bicycle came along, it certainly is an intriguing one.
Although this bus-cycle was originally designed as part of a City Cycle Tours project, it has since evolved into quite the unconventional transportation device. Unfortunately for the driver that harvests the pedaling power of the drunken, he or she will be an employee of the company that offers the City Cycle and will therefore have to be sober and responsible. Check out the City Cycle in action below:
I didn't know whether to post this in the amusing thread, the awesome thread, or the fucked up thread. I posted it here because at 1:33 you can see that they've labeled the fridge "SHIT BURGER."
It's being called the "poop burger". Japanese scientists have found a way to create artificial meat from sewage containing human feces.
Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.
The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.
Inhabitat notes that “the meatpacking industry causes 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to the release of methane from animals.” Livestock also consume huge amounts of resources and space in efforts to feed ourselves as well as the controversy over cruelty to animals. Ikeda’s recycled poop burger would reduce waste and emissions, not to mention obliterating Dante’s circle for gluttons.
The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research. Professor Ikeda understands the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces. They hope that once the research is complete, people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories.
A television personality known for using hidden cameras in undercover sting operations, is now personally involved in an alleged sex scandal. According to reports, hidden cameras captured American journalist Chris Hansen cheating on his wife. The 52-year-old investigative reporter and host of the popular Dateline NBC series, "To Catch a Predator" has reportedly been having a four-month affair with 30-year-old television reporter, Kristyn Caddell.
National Enquirer cameras captured Hansen during a romantic dinner date at the Ritz-Carlton on June 24th. After dinner, the two went to a liquor store then returned to her Palm Beach apartment around 10:00 P.M. At about 8:00 A.M. the following morning, the two emerged from Caddell's apartment wearing different clothing. She reportedly then drove Hansen to the airport. The video can be seen here. Hansen has been spending time in Florida investigating the 2006 disappearance of James "Jimmy T" Trindade.
Hansen began reporting on Internet sexual predators in 2004. The series, watched by more than 40 million Americans, brought national attention to the disturbing problem of online predators. Along with watchdog Perverted Justice, more than 250 online predators were "exposed" since the show's inception. Hansen also wrote a book "To Catch a Predator: Protecting Your Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home." Identity thieves and the counterfeit prescription drug trade were also part of Hansen's investigative work. And his work with child sex trafficking in Cambodia earned him two Emmy Awards. Other awards include four Edward R. Murrow and three Clarion awards.
Christopher Edward Hansen was born on March 26, 1959. He shares two sons with his 53-year-old wife, Mary Joan.
The woman, identified as 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, was found by police searching the home of the man, who believed he lived alone in Fukuoka.
The resident of the house, who has not been named, became suspicious that he was the victim of repeat burglaries after he noticed food was going missing from his refrigerator.
The man decided to install security cameras linked to his mobile phone and on Wednesday caught images of a woman walking around the house while he was out.
Believing he had detected the burglar, the man contacted police and, after an exhaustive search of the property, officers found the woman hiding in the top of a built-in cupboard designed to store bedding and mattresses.
Behind the sliding door, she had laid out a thin futon and had several plastic drinks bottles, police said. There was just enough room for her to lay down, they added.
"We searched the house, checking everywhere that someone could possibly hide," said Hiroki Itakura, a police spokesman. "When we slid open the closet door, there she was, curled up nervously on her side."
Horikawa told police that she had nowhere to live and had first taken up residence in the cupboard, in a room that the man rarely used, about one year previously when the owner of the house had gone out and not locked the door.
Police believe she may have moved between different addresses in the neighbourhood during her stowaway year.
The woman did not apparently steal any money or other items from the house, but did make use of the shower and toilet.
The police described Horikawa as looking neat and clean. She was charged with trespassing.
Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign.
A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet.
The firm's telecommunications supplier Verizon was called in after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, "Bob".
"The company's IT personnel were sure that the issue had to do with some kind of zero day malware that was able to initiate VPN connections from Bob's desktop workstation via external proxy and then route that VPN traffic to China, only to be routed back to their concentrator," said Verizon. "Yes, it is a bit of a convoluted theory, and like most convoluted theories, an incorrect one."
After getting permission to study Bob's computer habits, Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log into his account. He was paying them a fifth of his six-figure salary to do the work and spent the rest of his time on other activities.
The analysis of his workstation found hundreds of PDF invoices from the Chinese contractors and determined that Bob's typical work day consisted of:
9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos
11:30 a.m. – Take lunch
1:00 p.m. – Ebay time
2:00-ish p.m – Facebook updates, LinkedIn
4:30 p.m. – End-of-day update e-mail to management
5:00 p.m. – Go home
The scheme worked very well for Bob. In his performance assessments by the firm's human resources department, he was the firm's top coder for many quarters and was considered expert in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python.
Further investigation found that the enterprising Bob had actually taken jobs with other firms and had outsourced that work too, netting him hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit as well as lots of time to hang around on internet messaging boards and checking out the latest Detective Mittens video.
The shortlist in the 35th annual Diagram Prize also includes a study of Adolf Hitler's health by Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann titled "Was Hitler Ill?" and "Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts" by Jerry Gagne.
These are up against "How to Sharpen Pencils" by David Rees, "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis" by Tom Hickman, "Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop" by Reginald Bakeley and "How Tea Cosies Changed the World" by Loani Prior.
Philip Stone, coordinator of the prize run by industry publication the Bookseller, said the award might seem flippant but publishers and booksellers are well aware of the fact that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book.
"Publishers realize that if a book has an unusual title, particularly a novel, it can help make them more attractive to the public," Stone told Reuters.
"People think it looks interesting and will pick it up and read the synopsis and that makes them more likely to buy it."
As examples he cited "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" that has sold almost a million copies and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" that has sold more than two million copies and was adapted for the theatre.
"There is a cliché that you can't judge a book by its cover but I think people do, the cover and the title," said Stone.
The winner, chosen by an online public vote, will be announced on March 22.
The Diagram Prize was founded at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978 and first awarded to "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice".
Last year's winner was "Cooking with Poo", a Thai cookbook by Bangkok resident Saiyuud Diwong whose nickname is Poo.
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GOP Assault on Truth: Why Do Conservatives Pretend They Know More About Science Than Scientists?
Article is too long to post in full.
I don't find this amusing news but since we're on the subject...
Am I wrong to be increasingly frustrated? I have taken several upper-level courses in biology, and I know a good deal about genetics, ecology, and evolution. Am I wrong for being frustrated that people who have never taken a biology course in their life try to tell me that they know more about biology than me? That they have a deeper understanding of the processes surrounding speciation? I don't THINK that's intellectual elitism, as some might claim. I certainly wouldn't tell a priest that I know more about Christianity than he just because I don't believe his faith.
Sorry for the sudden outburst... I've had a lot of young-earth creationists around me lately and I've been dragged into trying (and failing, apparently) to show them how they have a lot of misconceptions about the scientific view of the diversity of life. But I'm still curious as to people's responses.
I've only ever come across a couple of people who are religious enough to openly admit that they don't believe certain things that it seems most everyone else accepts. I kind of pinned Waco as super super religious city, yet not ignorant type religious city. I was actually surprised to hear about the upbringing in Waco, but eh. I guess there are crazies everywhere in Texas.
Bill Nye made the mistake of putting himself in a big room full of them, and mentioning anything about the bible. "Oh no! He brought up the BIBLE with SCIENCE? I'll bet he's trying to say that the Bible is wrong!! Oh my god, he IS!! HOW DARE HE DO SUCH A THING!!"
And now we have these dip-shits passing legislation based on their belief that facts can be ignored. I think there is very good cause to be frustrated.
It's isn't elitism. You're the one who has educated yourself in the nature of the world around you. The people around us are the ones who have turned anti-intellectual and accused us of being too elite to join them in discarding science.
Conclusions on abuse
Study finds some priests couldn't cope with the '60s
Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces