EDGE Boston gives us the setup:
[Richard] Curtis, elected to the [Washington] state House three years ago, voted in the spring against a measure to provide domestic partnerships to gays and lesbians.
In 2006, Curtis came out against an anti-discrimination bill to protect GLBT people from being discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality.
I’m sure you [...]
I didn’t notice it at the time, but last week was ooblick.com’s tenth anniversary. Woot!
If you have time to waste, you can browse the Wayback Machine’s archive of crap I used to have.
If you enjoy solving crossword puzzles, you may have found yourself in the same position as I did the other day:
“Thug” is “GOON”, obviously: the O’s fit “OIL” and “NOTONYOURLIFE”. As for the G, well, I know nothing about ballet, so for all I know there’s someone named Twyla T. Garp out there.
I didn’t know [...]
I got to play with a Sony PRS-505 digital reader at a bookstore today. Basically, it’s an electronic device about the size of a slim paperback, with a big screen on which to read electronic books. According to the signs, it allows you to read plain text (it found a README file on the SD [...]
There are people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.[…]
Scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator.
— Ben Stein in the teaser trailer to Expelled
There are obstacles confronting the scientific study of religion, and there are misgivings that need to [...]
(Update, Dec. 12: Welcome, ShoutWire-ites! I’m glad y’all liked this entry, but please don’t leave a comment if you’re retarded or can’t recognize sarcasm without a blinking 72-point smiley.)
The Astronomical Observatory of Padova gives us this picture of the large-scale structure of the universe:
Each point is a galaxy. Notice how they’re arranged in two cones [...]
If you’ve never thought that the way molars develop in mammalian fetuses is way cool, you should read this article by PZ Mhieares at Pharyngula. It’s all about one substance in the environment of the developing jaw saying “you are going to become a bit of enamel”, and then that turns on another substance that [...]
By now you may have heard about the late Rev. Gary Aldridge, friend of Jerry Falwell, who was dead in his home, with… well, why don’t you just read the autopsy:
In his talk at the Atheist Alliance convention this past weekend, Sam Harris decided to go all contrarian, and argue that we shouldn’t even use the word “atheist”. While he makes some good points, I feel that on the whole, he’s wrong.
I have a project in which I have a row of cells, and a number of segments of given lengths, and I need to try out all of the ways in which the segments can fit into the row. If you like, think of it as: how many ways can “eye”, “zygote”, and “is” be [...]