What I’ve noticed (2 week edition)

In order to avoid doing something about pollutants, the White House simply refused to open the email from the EPA.  (via The Scientific Activist)

I really hope we don’t invade Iran. (via pebkac thoughts)

You know how US soldiers were tortured by the Chinese during the Korean War?  Well, we’re using the same techniques on Iraqis. (via Gadfly)

The “good old days” weren’t good.

good old days

Beautiful Darren Waterson paintings at Le territoire des sens.

darren waterson

Yasumasa Morimura dressed like famous female movie stars and photographed himself.  (via Manolo’s Shoe Blog)

Reminder from Angry Astronomer: prayer is bullshit.

Congress still pushes for abstinence only funding.  The ACLU’s Caroline Fredrickson says it best:

It’s hard to imagine a good reason why, in these tight economic times, Congress would intentionally flush taxpayer dollars down the drain by spending them on disproven, ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. We are floored that they continue to ignore study after study, and the consensus of the public health community, all concluding that these programs censor vital health care information, teach gender stereotypes, discriminate against lesbian and gay teens, and in some cases promote religion in the classroom in violation of the Constitution.” (via Feministing)

Pharyngula links us to abiogenesis in a nutshell.

Comments

  1. The “invade iran” youtube link is broken.

    Thanks for the links. 🙂

  2. Mike says:

    The notion that the “good old days” were somehow better is always one that has puzzled me. It’s almost never true in any important sense.

    It seems pervasive in any field, but I am particularly aware of it in technology, where people go all moon-eyed over their VIC-20s and Atari 2600s, their Commodore 64s and their Apple IIs — all of which were capable of 1/1000 of what any modern machine is.

    I think it would be interesting to get a grant for some sort of psychological study to assay why people romanticize the past so readily — a past which, by all balanced accounts, was usually roundly terrible.

    I remember the good old days. They were dismal.

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