BSG

Have I mentioned lately how much Battlestar Galactica kicks ass? No? Well it does. HOLY FRAK.

Just so you know.

Yet another primitive culture makes the news

Student accused of witchcraft.

Boy, those superstitious Afri -- um, Americans, are at it again.

In a case reminiscent of the Salem Witch trials, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma today filed a federal lawsuit charging that school officials violated 15-year-old Brandi Blackbear's rights when they accused her of casting a hex that resulted in a teacher's illness.

"These outlandish accusations have made Brandi Blackbear's life at school unbearable," said Joann Bell, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. "I for one would like to see the so-called evidence this school has that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell."

Gee, what are the odds that the accusers are Christians? After all, it does warn against witchcraft in the Bible so witchcraft must actually exist, right? Right?

You mean there's more than that guy who trounced us?

Woo hoo! The Republican Party has figured out that blacks exist!

Republican National Committee chooses first black Chairman

Apparently they did learn something from the election.

And the Inquisition? A surprise party for the Jews.

"Thanks" to PZ for introducing me to this charming fellow, a Bishop in the Catholic Church. The clip is only 90 seconds long and is definitely worth seeing.

The Bankrupt Party

Here's a really good article about the recent behavior of the Republicans and their denial of reality. Below is a small bit.

On the January 11 Meet the Press episode I mentioned above, all of the economists, liberals and conservatives, agreed that some kind of stimulus is necessary to kick-start the economy. Economists will also tell you that if you genuinely want to stimulate consumer spending, tax cuts, especially for the middle class and wealthy, are less effective than government spending, since those tax cuts are more likely to be saved than spent. Programs that aid those in trouble (like food stamps and extended unemployment insurance), as well as programs that create jobs (like infrastructure projects), are far more effective in stimulating consumer spending.

And despite all of this information, not one single Republican member of the House voted for the stimulus bill yesterday. (It still passed, 244-188, with 11 Democrats joining the 177 Republicans in opposing the bill.) Not one. Zero. Zippo. Nada. Nil. None. There wasn't one Republican in the whole House of Representatives who could see his or her way clear to support legislation to help our tanking economy, even if they thought the bill wasn't perfect. And what was the primary objection of the Republicans, based on the GOP's suggested alternative bill (that was voted down by the House)? They wanted more tax cuts.

Seriously? More freakin' tax cuts? What's next? Are they going to be asking for less regulations on Wall Street? Another invasion of Iraq? Were they not watching what happened the last eight years (and, more importantly, what the American people voted for in November)?

Cat's in the Cradle

On Tuesday night, Carol and I went to see a movie at a friend’s house. Since we were seeing Cameron Crowe’s nearly autobiographical, rock and roll film “Almost Famous” we took Rachel along, telling her that she’d love it. Carol and I had seen the theatrical version a few years ago and really liked it as a coming of age story set in the seventies. This time we ended up seeing the Director’s Cut at a whopping two hours and forty-two minutes, but it was still very good. When I was growing up, my conservative nature negatively colored my view of many potentially rewarding experiences. The movie makes me wish I had been a bit less stuffy and more free-spirited as I grew up.

After it was over we asked Rachel what she thought. To our shock, my daughter, who is smart, very tolerant of others and much more open than I was as a teen, hated it. She said she didn’t like the characters, didn’t like what the characters were doing, didn’t like anything that was happening and didn’t care about anyone or anything in the movie. As we talked about it, it was with some surprise that I realized that had I seen “Almost Famous” at her age, I would have felt exactly the same way. I would have been disapproving of pretty much everything that happened. The story wouldn’t have caused me a wistful envy, but disdain. Rachel shares more of my naturally conservative nature than I had realized.

As an adult I’ve grown in many ways and I try to be more open to new experiences. I can appreciate a movie like “Almost Famous” today when I wouldn’t have years ago. But still, I can understand why Rachel didn’t like it.

I can’t decide whether to be extremely proud or appalled.

Tax cuts for everyone!

For the last eight years, even as the Republican Administration and Republican Congress were running up the largest debt in world history, the only Republican prescription for economic problems was tax cuts. Tax cuts are the only tool in their belt and we've seen how well our economy has done since.

So President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have put together a stimulus package to try and jump-start the economy. It passed the House but not a single Republican voted for it. Okay, so what solution are they proposing as an alternative? Yes, tax cuts. Just tax cuts.

Holy crap these guys are one-note idiots. A broken record envies *these* guys for their consistency. Hopefully, this is just one more step in their slide to total irrelevancy.

The first Pakled President just returned to Crawford

Huge news!

Iceland is about to select the world's first Andorian Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir! She's obviously had her antennae removed to better fit in with her human constituents. To the right is a picture from a few years ago.

Warning: Don't try this if you work in a bowling alley, on a ship, or at the Grand Canyon.

The building in which I work has some long hallways. Often, while I’m walking down the hall, I close my eyes to see how far I can walk without opening them. I know that I’ll hear someone coming and so I’m not worried about bumping into someone. What gets me is the fear that I’ll hit one of the walls. I can barely walk 40-50 feet without opening my eyes. Most of the time when I do, I’m still close to the center of the hall and was in no danger of bumping into anything. But on subsequent attempts my brain can’t convince the rest of me that I’m walking a straight path and I invariably feel anxious and open my eyes.

I know it’s irrational, but I just can’t master it. Of course, when I do master it, you can just imagine what will happen then . . .

Criticizing Religion

A couple of weeks ago, an occasional reader of my Blog commented that I pick on Christianity a lot. If you click on the “Religion” tag to pull up old posts, you’ll certainly see that’s true. You’ll also see that I’ve criticized Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, and Scientology. I do this because I’m a skeptic and I can’t stand hypocrisy or stupidity. Religion tends to bring out both. Trying to resolve complicated, modern problems by applying centuries-old religious dogma (coming from primitive tribes who didn’t understand the world a tenth as well as we do) leads directly to stupid (and often cruel) behavior and irrational positions. Dusty old holy books have nothing useful to contribute to issues like stem cell research, civil rights, gender roles, population control, cloning or any of the myriad modern issues humanity is grappling with. We need to have honest, insightful discussions of these issues and when someone brings out their holy book, which just happens to agree with their position, all they’re doing is getting in the way of rational, reasonable solutions.

I criticize Christianity more than other religions for two reasons. One, I live in the United States, a nation composed of a large Christian majority, and so I’m exposed to Christianity on a daily basis, much more so than any other religion. And two, U.S. Christians are particularly aggressive at pushing their religion on others. As a general rule, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews aren’t trying to push creationism into public schools, aren’t trying to institutionalize their religion into the U.S. government, aren’t endangering the health and safety of children, and aren’t acting all high and mighty while pushing their ridiculously out-of-date, irrational ideas. Since religious behavior worldwide is mostly homogeneous, I’m sure they do this in other countries, but in the U.S., not so much.

So, until religious folk learn to keep their religion out of other people’s business and stop trying to drag our country and world back into the Dark Ages, I will continue to criticize their actions. Sadly, I don’t expect this to happen in my lifetime.

If only Fox News' world *would* end

As if the wingnuts of the world need more to worry about, Fox News has decided to once again beat the dead horse of the doomsday theories concerning the Large Hadron Collider.

Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.

"We conclude that ... the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible. Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >> 1 second) than is typically predicted by other models," the three state in a brief paper posted at the scientific discussion Web site ArXiv.org.

FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn't seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.

They forgot one other thing that didn't seem possible once -- that Fox News wouldn't be written by a bunch of fear-mongering idiots who don't seem to understand anything about reality. Oh, wait, that isn't possible.

An empty plate

We went to a local Korean/Japanese restaurant on Friday night around 7:30. We’d been to this particular place years ago and our memory of it was good. When we arrived, we looked in the window and there were no customers in the place. Not a single person. One family was just leaving, but if we went in, we’d be alone in the relatively big (for our area) restaurant. We discussed bailing for a few minutes because we don’t like dining in empty restaurants but we went in anyway, seeing that they obviously needed the business.

As we remembered, everything was good and the service was very friendly. One other family came in while we were eating which alleviated the creepiness factor just a bit. Carol spoke to the hostess/owner as we were leaving and she said that this was the worst she had ever seen the restaurant business.

Being alone in a restaurant is very sad, especially when it’s a prime time like a Friday night. There are people standing-by to cook and serve food, and no one is taking them up on it. It’s especially sad when it’s a local place, likely encompassing the entire savings of the owners. Unfortunately, many thousands will lose their restaurants in the current economic crisis as people eat out less.

Hey, you're right! That didn't make sense!

For a fun analysis of a not-so-efficient garbage system, check out this 2002 analysis of the trash compactor on the Death Star. It's so right.

Good community planning

My county, Montgomery County, Maryland, has a really great "dump" facility. It's open every day of the week and you can drive right in. They have these two level bays where the top level is for dumping and the bottom level is for truck access. You simply back into one of twenty spots, and toss your stuff down into a huge bin. When these truck-sized bins get full, they just pull up a truck on the bottom level and haul it away. They also have facilities to drop off yard waste and refuse and recycling drop-offs for appliances, computer equipment and more.

We had a bunch of debris from our recent basement remodel and after loading up the minivan this afternoon, I drove to the facility and had it all disposed of within ten minutes. Awesome.

Now I feel all warm and fuzzy

This is a great editorial. Excellent job, Nica Lalli.

President Obama acknowledged me in his first speech as president. He looked up from the podium on the steps of the capitol of this country and he seemed to look right at me, in my living room hundreds of miles and thousands of feet of television cable away. In one phrase he included me and made me feel part of the country I live in, the country I was born in, my country: The United States of America.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," Obama said. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers." Including the words non-believers was a first. Never before has a president recognized people like me in the many others, sub-groups or factions that they might mention so as to be inclusive of all who call this country home. Never.

. . .

It is as simple as somehow stating that they understand the fact that in a crowd of 2 million there would be (statistically speaking) about 280,000 people who would fall into the non-belief category. That is 14 percent of the general population which, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, is the percent of the American population that has no religion or does not believe in God. Never mind figuring out how to acknowledge all the other religions that would also be represented, all the non-Christians who live in this country and vote and are as American as Mr. Warren. It has become too easy for people like Pastor Warren to think that this is a Christian nation. And during the last eight years it felt as if it was leaning heavily in that direction.

It took our newly minted President to remind us that indeed it is not. Our country has no religion embedded within its government and thanks to the Constitution it never will. It took a man who is part black, part white and whose extended family truly represents the new American family in all it's mixed up crazy diversity to remind us that the patchwork that is America is what makes this country so special and so great. I am honored to be part of that patchwork. And I thank my new President for thinking to include me, and the 42 million other Americans like me, in it as we face forward and work together to fix problems, celebrate greatness and overcome divisiveness.

Pure awesomeness. Captured my feelings exactly.

Maybe we should call him something else

I was watching Headline News this morning and when the anchor started a sentence"Being the President . . ." I almost threw up in my mouth for a second until I remembered that she was talking about the new guy, not the last guy. A wave of relief then washed over me.

It's going to be tough getting over the initial visceral reaction to the words "The President". I'll have to muddle through by focusing on his competence and intelligence.

Obama bends new ethics rule

Sigh. That didn't last long.

The nomination of William Lynn as Deputy Secretary of Defense has placed Barack Obama under the burn of political heat just days into the presidency.

Having lobbied the government on behalf of the defense industry giant Raytheon, Lynn's appointment violates the newly-instituted ethics guidelines that the president applied to his staff shortly after taking office. Questioned about the transgression, the White House said Lynn was being granted a waiver.

This is disappointing. Lynn is supposed to be very qualified, having served in DOD before, but it's still waiving a rule that Obama made one of his tentpole ethic reforms. He has been getting heat from this and he should. It doesn't mean I'm not thrilled that Bush is gone and Obama is in charge, but it is a letdown.

I mean, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. But don't plan the plan if you can't follow through.

Panoramic Inauguration

Now this is incredible. See how much you can zoom in. Get a real feel for how many people were at the inauguration, just in the front section. Wow.

And thus begins the Fourth Age . . .

So much for separation of church and state

There are 60 million non-Christians in the United States. Maybe someone can explain to me how having a state-sponsored prayer, specifically to the Christian deity, Jesus, at the inauguration of the new President is not the government endorsing Christianity and saying screw you to those 60 million people.

Think it's just ceremonial and doesn't mean anything? Fine. Then get rid of it.

Think that non-Christians should just grin and bear it? Think how you'd feel if the prayer focused on Islam.

The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

So long, President Bush. This one's for you.

Here it comes

Less than 24 hours to go in the Bush Presidency. It's hard to believe.

I voted for Bush in 2000. Like half the country, I was outraged by the electoral hijinks going on in Florida and relieved when the election was finally settled.

Bush's first seven months in office seemed harmless enough. Then came 9/11 and I think he handled the next couple of months really well. The invasion of Afghanistan was hugely successful and had worldwide support. Then things started to go off the rails.

After the Iraqi invasion, it became clear that the Administration didn't have a plan and couldn't ever admit a mistake. Once they had decided something, nothing, even reality, could change their minds. This inflexibility stemmed from a rigid ideological stance, an unseemly arrogance and religious fervor. They gave public money to religious groups and once they started ignoring the Constitution, more outrages followed.

I don't need to go down the long list of Administration failures. They are legion.

In less than a day we'll have a new Administration. Huzzah. I couldn't be more happy to see the old one go.

Fanboys

I REALLY want to see Fanboys. There's an interesting story behind the film which has been sitting on the shelf for years. It comes out on Feb. 6 but only in "select" cities (Austin TX, Houston, TX, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA). Let's hope it does well enough to warrant a larger release.

Are we going to start facing reality?

Abstinence-only sex education doesn't work. Multiple studies have shown that not only doesn't it deter sex among teenagers, but that it actually results in more pregnancies and STDs as teens are unprepared when they do have sex. And of course if they don't learn these things when they're in school, then they grow up to be adults who don't know these things. Sexuality is something that everyone must understand and we've been damn stupid not to teach people how to handle it responsibly.

Obama has a chance to end this fiasco. Some people. of course, still don't get it.

Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, suggested that one option would be for Congress "to allow true choice" by approving funding for both comprehensive and abstinence-focused programs.

Referring to recent data showing increases in teen births and sexually transmitted diseases among young people, she said, "Now is not the time to remove even one of the tools that can help teens."

Abstinence-only is not a tool. It is an utter failure. Those who promote its use have their heads in the sand, view sexuality as sinful, and therefore haven't been listening to rational, reality-based concepts like acting like adults and giving our children information they will need.

If your goal is to reduce the amount of teenage pregnancy and reduce the number of abortions, then grow up and get with the program.

Here's me for a full five minutes while watching Battlestar Galactica last night

BSG, Season 4.5 premiered tonight

Holy Frak! Holy Frak! Holy Frak! Holy Frak!!!!!

Mmmmmmmm.

Peanut Butter M&M’s are the most awesome M&M’s ever. Wow, are these things good.

A nice parenting moment

When Ben, now ten years old, was younger, to his amazement I would often pull a quarter out of his ear. Because of his age I could get away with it without having any sleight of hand skills whatsoever. I can do one really excellent card trick, but that's it.

The other night Ben asked me to pull a quarter out of his ear. He insisted that I am really good at doing it. I felt a bit bad for tricking him and because I can't do it now without him noticing, I begged off. I found it fascinating that in his mind, I have this great skill that doesn't really exist.

But it also made me feel good that he looked up to me for that and that in his mind, maybe I'm a better person than I actually am.

Plane Crash in Hudson River

Not a miracle.

A tribute to the makers of the Airbus and to the skill of the pilot, Chesley Sullenberg, who pulled off the first water landing of a major aircraft in history without fatalities. Nice job.

Don't let the door hit you . . .

I just turned on NBC to watch My Name is Earl and found President Bush delivering his final address to the nation. I had two thoughts.

One, I want to live in the America that the President apparently lives in. It's much nicer than the craphole he's left us here in reality.

And two, I finally found the drawback to High Definition TV. Yikes!

Religions worthy of granite

Most people act as if there are only a dozen or so religions in the world: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and some weird "cultish" religions like Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism, Scientology, etc. Pascal's Wager, a typical fundamentalist argument for believing in Jesus, depends on a person not factoring in the many, many different religions from which to choose.

Truth is, there are tens of thousands of religions in the world. Christianity alone is comprised of over 30,000 sects. Most of these religions claim to have a unique understanding of the world and be the only way to live your life and (in some cases) achieve a reward in an afterlife. Please note that Atheism is NOT a religion.

Check out this interesting link which shows which religions are authorized to have that religion's symbol on a grave at the Arlington National Cemetery. It only contains 40 or so entries but it's surprisingly broad and gives a much bigger picture of American religion than most people consider.

It also demonstrates quite clearly why church and state must remain completely separate if we are to have full religious freedom in the U.S. After all, if government endorses a particular religion, who's to say it will be yours?

I hope Jenny McCarthy is available to conduct my biopsy

Do you have questions about vaccines and autism? This article in the New York Times is a good place to start. It does a good job of summarizing what's going on and provides information to a valuable resource.

About Time

Get ready for the conservative backlash. Obama is going to do away with Don't Ask Don't Tell.

President-elect Barack Obama will allow gays to serve openly in the military by overturning the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy that marred President Clinton's first days in office, according to incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Whether the homophobes will admit it or not, gays have been serving in our military with honor for as long as we've had a military. Certainly thousands are now on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the stupid and dangerous consequences of Don't Ask Don't Tell has been the dismissal of dozens of gay translators who spoke Arabic, right at the time when they were most needed.

If you work in a company with more than a dozen people, the odds are that someone you work with is gay. They go to your church, they work in your children's schools. They are not poisonous and won't taint you by their presence. They won't undermine morale in our military. They don't have a problem, those who hate them do.

If you don't like gays, get over it. They deserve the right to serve without having to hide who they are.

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!

Ricardo Montalban has died. He was a cool guy. RIP.

From the Horse's Mouth

I recently had a conversation with someone who still thinks that we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Listen carefully to this . . .

He would have gottten away with it too!

Geez, this Indiana guy who tried to fake his death in a plane crash and disappear is like the worst, uh, death-faker ever. His awesome plan was discovered almost before his abandoned plane hit the ground and his picture was immediately all over the national news. Now, the very next day it looks like he's been caught.

His criminal scheme was about as hard to thwart as any Scooby Doo villain's.

2008 - Five and Dime List

Every year I keep track of the games I've played. It's a little bit of a pain-in-the-butt, but I find the results very interesting. Here's my "Five and Dime" list for 2007.

In 2006, I played a total of 439 games. In 2007, I was way down with a total of 346 games. Yikes! What's worse, I had only one "dime" (that is games I played more than 10 times), and only fourteen "nickels". My most played game was Poker.

In 2008, I turned the trend around. Here's my list.

Agricola	60
Star Wars: Epic Duels	28
Dominion	27
Pandemic	17
Race for the Galaxy	16
Unpublished Prototype	15
Star Wars: Episode 1 - Clash of the Lightsabers	14
Poker	11
Cheeky Monkey	10

Hanging Gardens, The	9
Sorry! Sliders	8
Circus Flohcati	7
Crokinole	7
Escalation!	7
R-Eco	7
Diamant	5
Showmanager	5
Uptown	5
Zooloretto	5

Agricola now dominates my plays. I don't think I've played anything as many times as I've played Agricola. Poker was way down this year as we had difficulty getting our group together.

What's more significant is that I now have nine dimes and ten nickels!

Alas, my total was 499. A huge leap up, but one game short of 500! Rats. Maybe this year.

To Protect and Serve

Speaking of horrifically stupid . . .

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

Oops. Of course, these morons are now being sued by the family for being too stupid to live. What happens next is the part that just makes me crazy. If I were the police in question, I would apologize, I would take responsibility and do whatever I could to make it up to this family. But not these morons.

Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home.

Both the daughter and the father were arrested for assaulting a peace officer. "The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off."

As far as I'm concerned, these guys are lucky the parents didn't have a gun. What would any parent do when three plain-clothed men are trying to pull their daughter, kicking and screaming, into a van? How can these police not understand that their actions were by any standard appalling and would have been terrifying to any family? Why aren't their superiors stepping in to put a stop to this? And don't they know that their further behavior just makes it worse?

I hope these doofuses are sued to within an inch of their life and fired. They're lucky they're not being prosecuted.

Long train to nowhere

I take the DC Metro into work. On occasion, there are train break-downs and this disrupts the commute as the system was built with only one track going in each direction. If a train breaks down, all traffic has to be single-tracked around the trouble spot.

Last Friday night, a rail was found cracked at one of the stations, delaying all trains on my line. Last night, as I was returning home, the packed train I was riding had a door break-down and so they off-loaded the train into the busiest station of the entire system. On my very next trip, this morning, the packed train I was riding also had a door break-down so they off-loaded us into a station with a very small platform where I had to wait for three trains before the crowd eased enough for me to embark. Yes, it was a rare twofer! I regret that Monday morning’s commute was so uneventful as it interrupted this fateful run of bad luck. I can’t wait till tonight to see if I can pull off the Trifecta.

And one week from today, Metro expects the busiest day in its history, with projected ridership of over 1 million people.

Yeah, that’s why I’m staying home.

Just because humans can have as many offspring as rabbits doesn't mean we should

The Duggar family had their 18th child a couple of weeks ago. I actually had never heard of them until the recent birth announcement. I was, frankly, appalled.

There's no way these children will get the full attention they need from their parents. With 2 parents to 18 kids it can't be done. They've adopted the buddy system where the older children are assigned younger children to care for. That puts a lot of pressure on kids and kids raising kids isn't a good recipe for a human being.

This really strikes me as selfish, irresponsible, and as one of my friends said, a fetish. It's unfair to these children and to the community that apparently donates the funds for them to live.

Of course, they're conservative Baptists who belong to the Quiverfull movement, their lives controlled by their unusual reading of the Bible. How else would they think this was a good idea?

And Ghandi? Huge Douchebag.

When we were in Indiana visiting family, I caught a fragment of a conversation between Carol and her mom. Someone mentioned something about Thomas Jefferson taking credit for other people’s inventions. Carol, out of left field, suddenly said (paraphrasing), “Yeah, we’re learning that he was quite a scumbag, aren’t we?”

To some extent, I can understand what she meant; Jefferson did own slaves. Of course, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson is probably the smartest guy ever to be President and he was a true renaissance man. It was so weird hearing someone speak of Thomas Jefferson this way, I found it very funny.

In other weird Presidential news, Rachel hates Andrew Jackson.

Don’t ask.

Blogging

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last couple of days. I hoped to get a lot of things done this weekend, including blogging, but spent most sleeping or watching TV. I had one of those weekends where I just couldn't get much done.

I have about 15 topics to blog about. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

What's the "Alternative" for intelligence?

The mainstream media often reports on science without actually understanding the underlying concepts on which they're reporting. Consequently, they publish a lot of stupid nonsense that's incorrect and sometimes dangerous.

Case in point: The Best Alternative Medicine for Children.

Frustrated that Luke was still in pain, his parents, who live in Madison, Wisconsin, were nonetheless reluctant to take their baby to see more doctors. They'd gone that route when their older child, Anna, had stomach problems, and nothing the specialists recommended worked terribly well.

But then a family friend suggested they contact Dr. Adam Rindfleisch, a University of Wisconsin family doctor who specializes in integrating traditional Western medicine with alternative medicine.

Rindfleisch suggested probiotics -- "friendly" bacteria that he says have been shown to help babies and children with diarrhea. While probiotics didn't cure Luke, Kruse-Field said, they seem to have helped.

Now she says she wonders why doctors didn't suggest probiotics for Anna. "We went to multiple specialists, but no one mentioned alternative medicine. I actually asked about probiotics, and they didn't know anything about them," she says. "And when we went to to naturopathathic or homeopathic doctors, they didn't know anything about traditional medicine."

I'm a bit confused here because I think that probiotics actually have proven effects in digestive disorders. They're not "alternative" in that there's actual proof that they work.

It's funny that the last sentence couldn't be more true. Stupid naturopaths and homeopaths don't know anything about "traditional" aka "real" medicine or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.

The rest of the article just gets really stupid with quotes from "alternative" "doctors" who are peddling their nonsense. They endorse Chamomile tea for colic with this brilliant quote:

In many cultures, from the Middle East to Latin America, parents give chamomile tea to their cranky babies. "What that tells me is that over thousands of years, people have figured out that it works," says Dr. Sandy Newmark, who's on the faculty at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

Right. And millions have believed in astrology for thousands of years. That doesn't mean it's not horsecrap.

The article concludes with, "To locate one ["alternative" doctor], visit the American Academy of Pediatrics Web site, put in your location and in the pull-down menu opt for a pediatrician in the Section on Complementary, Holistic & Integrative Medicine. You also can go to the CAHCIM and click on your state. Many centers listed are for adults, but you can call and ask if they know of a pediatrician or family doctor who has an interest in alternative medicine. "

Potentially thousands of people will be harmed by this useless, mindless garbage passing itself off as wisdom. CNN should really be ashamed and embarrassed.

Another leech preys on tragedy and sorrow

Stupid fracking psychics.

Psychic detective Gale St. John, who will star in a forthcoming reality show called "The Body Hunter," told MyFOXOrlando.com she was drawn to the same area on the same day in August that Kronk was — and caught her hunch on video.

"All right, I've got to pull over,” St. John is heard saying on the video when the SUV reaches the wooded lot.

She told MyFOXOrlando.com that her cadaver dogs "took a very heavy interest" in the spot.

"Something's not right here. Something's not right here," St. John tells her daughter in the video.

St. John said she wasn't shocked when the remains were found and identified as the girl, who had been missing since mid-June.

"I honestly wasn't surprised at all,” she told the station. “My reaction was, that's where we said we felt something."

But, bizarrely, despite this awesome insight, she didn't actually find the body. Hmm.

Trying to make a buck by peddling your ridiculous phony wares in the death of a little girl, likely by her own mother's hand, is beneath contempt.

No disrespect intended

Whenever I see a headline like this:

"Stooges guitarist found dead".

I always think they should add the word "quite". As in:

"Stooges guitarist found quite dead".

I don't know why, but seeing it that way makes the pain a little easier to bear.

Go into the light . . .

The National Gallery of Art is hosting a temporary exhibit by artist Leo Villareal consisting of over 40,000 LEDs in a concourse connecting the two NGA buildings. Since it's literally across the street from my office, I went today and took a few pictures with my Blackberry. I love this kind of stuff. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport has an awesome Light Tunnel.

I kind of felt it was missing some wavy new age music, but it was still very cool. I spent at least 15 minutes riding the moving sidewalks back and forth under the lights.

Haik-me? No, Haiku!

Haiku is easy
But a lifetime to master
Not so much I think

Haiku to post-vacation blues

Back to work, oh joy
The rain, symbolic, falls gray
Weekend, where art thou?

Quick thought

We should print trivia questions on our paper currency. That would rule and would greatly enhance the experience of paying for stuff.

Come Visit Scenic Bedford Falls!

Speaking of Christmas movies, I caught part of "It's a Wonderful Life" the other night.

I never realized how close Bedford Falls was to falling into the abyss. During the intervention by Clarence to show George what it would be like if he had never been born, he gets to see a transformed Bedford Falls.

Bedford Falls appears to be smaller than Goshen, Indiana, so is likely between 10,000 and 20,000 population, all of whom seem to be total douchebags. Once George Bailey stops having been born, the city (now Potterville) is turned into a den of inequity of spectacular proportions. Stumbling down the street, George encounters bars, dance joints, burlesque shows and other adult venues. There seems to be no restaurants, banks, movie theatres or other forms of civilization. It's all adult sleaze.

And the people are now universally angry, violent and mistrustful. No one's better nature prevails once George is taken out of the picture. Mr. Potter is able to corrupt everything and everyone to turn Bedford Falls into a hellhole. And considering that this was post-war 1946, that's a pretty impressive feat.

So, I humbly submit for your interest, the new Bedford Falls P.R. campaign.

Are you bigot if you oppose gay marriage?

Here's a good post on Gay Marriage and bigotry at Atheist Revolution.

YOUR Favorite Christmas Movie Revealed!

Well, the results of my super-scientific poll are in! And it's a seven-way tie for Favorite Christmas Movie between Die Hard, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Year Without a Santa Clause, A Rankin-Bass Movie, Elf and Home Alone!

Since ties are broken by proximity to the top of the list (a super scientist told me this was the only valid way to construct the poll), Die Hard wins! Woo hoo!

Plus, John McClane could easily win in a match up with any of the leads of those other movies. So that just reinforces the results. You don't mess with John McClane.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Let's hope that 2009 is a lot better than the last few years.