Lunchtime Reading
Some good stuff out on the internet today:
First, this report from the Boston Globe, about how reporters do get out and around in Iraq, tends to contradict what the lovely Lara Logan said last week. I should should just turn down the volume.
The Jan. 7 kidnapping of Jill Carroll, like the severe wounding of ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff later that month, highlighted to the American public the array of dangers confronting journalists in Iraq.
But for reporters still in Baghdad, the events had little impact on the way they operate. They already had limited their movements and steadily increased their security. Yet, they still find ways to report the news.
”I think the notion that we cannot report at all has gotten overblown,” said Jonathan Finer, a Baghdad reporter for The Washington Post. ”We are not housebound. We just have to be careful and discreet and take calculated risks, not stupid ones.”
Speaking of Iraq, it looks like March will have the fewest Coalition casualties in two years. Although things are not at all hunky-dory there. The Shi’ites kept their powder dry for three years, and now, have had enough. It’s going to get ugly.
And, if it’s ugly you want, try reading this from the LA Times, about Creationist students hectoring their teachers in science classes.
“Isn’t it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?” sophomore Chris Willett demands. ” ‘Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn’t.”
[TEacher] Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn’t listening. “I feel a tail growing!” he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.
Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He’s about to start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: “How are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could just be some deformed raccoon.”
From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: “Those are real bones that someone actually found? You’re not just making this up?”
“No, I am not just making it up,” Frisby says.
The article goes on and on. Really annoying and distressing. Let’s just head back to the Middle Ages. PZ Myers replies to a Creationist emailer, with his trademark bluntness. As the cliche goes, “Mean people suck,” but I do sympathize with Myers’ frustration.
This article suggests ways for judges (and real people, too) to tell the seven warning signs of bogus science. Here’s one of them:
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.
More sadness, as Phib, aka Cdr Salamander, notes the passing of the Sea Harrier
The Royal Navy’s Sea Harrier jump-jets, which played a vital role in the Falklands conflict 24 years ago, made their final flight yesterday.
Tributes were paid to the fighter as the last five from 801 Squadron performed an aerial display at Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton, Somerset, their base for 26 years.
Anyway, I need one of these. Badly.
HIS Luxury Box
Anabasis, Book 1 - Review
Republicans against the war
Some actual good news from Iraq
Stop Reading My Website