The time has come to update my blogroll links again, so here are a few edits that I have made. Read More…

(via Pharyngula and The Thumb) The Institute for Creation Research, which was denied its request to be an accredited degree-granting institution, has decided to sue the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board! It’s 67-page complaint “reads kind of like stereo instructions.” Not only are they suing the members of the board institutionally, but also individually, at their homes. The first couple pages of the complaint are grand, you should check it out, but in case you were thinking to read all 67 pages - there’s a lot of mindless crap in it and your time is better spent searching for lint in your belly button.

They are suing for viewpoint discrimination, religious discrimination, a violation of their first amendment rights, and even violations of interstate commerce! I didn’t know they had a traveling road show - I ought to see it sometime.

Here’s my favorite part of the complaint: Read More…

A day long waited for - Wisconsin Citizens for Science is having its kickoff meeting today at 2 pm at the Monona Library. From the site:

That’s right folks, our first meeting has been scheduled for Saturday, April 18th at 2PM. Andrew Petto, WCfS interim president, will be speaking on the state of science education in Wisconsin, and there’ll be cookies and stuff. Scientifically speaking, “Yum, yum!” The meeting is at…

Monona Public Library
1000 Nichols Rd
Monona, WI 53716

I’ll be there to learn about the current state of science education in this state - and to eat cookies. That is, after a long, hard day selling beeswax candles and stuff at the Farmer’s Market. You could make a trip into town at noon to go to the first market of the season, (pick up a fabulous candle…) and then get involved in strengthening science education!

Hat Tip to Pharyngula. (Might not be safe for work)

“Chemiosmotic Phosphorylation… Chemiosmotic Phosphorylation… Chemiosmotic Phosphorylation!”

Rosalind Franklin is my main lady, too. Shh!

Regular readers know I don’t often write about political stuff on my blog. But Monday I got something pretty funny in my inbox. Mass-mailed to all UW-Madison students, the local Republican student club was advertising a local “Tea Party” on April 15th to protest… taxes. Here’s what their slogan was:

Enough raising our taxes.

Enough driving jobs from Wisconsin.

Enough altering our way of life.

Having just completed The Ms. and my taxes for last year, I can safely say that our own taxes have not been raised. Sure, the first-time homebuyer’s credit (w00t) will help us replace the dinosaur of a furnace that burned us at the bank this winter, but even if you cut that out we don’t have anything to complain about.

Nor do many others. Across the board, people are paying less taxes, even capital gains taxes. The only people who could complain about taxes are… those who are making more than $250,000 a year! Maybe I should crash their tea party so I can meet all the disgruntled rich heirs and heiresses?

Oh wait, given that I pay taxes, I have a job. And during that tea party I’ll be showing an undergrad how to do PCR, as part of that job. Dang, it could have been great. Why did they have to schedule it during the day when actual taxpayers are working?

UPDATE 2:30 pm: PZ Myers also posted about the ‘tea party’ - apparently the people planning the event are calling it “Tea Bagging.” Ummm… that already has a meaning. It involves a certain dangly bit of male anatomy and the mouth of a victim. Hey, next time look up what you are saying before you sound like nutbags. This news report is full of win.

Five years, oh where has the time gone? Five years ago today, a creationist promised the science blogging community that he would explain a fancy new term that he came up with. Supposed to be a measurement of the degree of development of an organism, “Ontogenetic Depth” interested PZ Myers because he himself studies developmental biology. But the creationist never explained what it was, how it was calculated, and why the most developmentally well-characterized metazoan model species, C. elegans, had an OD of ’somewhere between 7 and 9.’

That creationist’s name is Paul Nelson. Five years ago today he made a promise, Read More…

My favorite April Fools in the science blogosphere was in 2007, when The Panda’s Thumb pretended that an idiotic creationist named Michael Egnor was an elaborate hoax played on science bloggers by the intelligent design “think” tank - the Discovery Institute. Using a site designed to look like their media complaints division news blog, the Thumb announced that we were all SUCKERED. It had me going for a bit.

This year had a few good pranks. In a blatant attempt to out-do myself from last year, I decided to have the new Biofortified Blog be taken over by Greenpeace. Go here for the details.

Jonathan Eisen passed around a dubious story about the LHC operating in secret - I know from past experience not to trust him on April 1st. Maybe it was the fact that the NY Times was hosted on his server? What is Jon is the NY Times? Anyway, I gave it a little plug.

On the Thumb, the creationist organization AIG merged with the insurance giant AIG. And PZ Myers laments on how hard it is to tell the difference between extremely insane stuff and hoaxes on this one day of the year. Poe’s Law is indeed alive and well. Living in Jersey, I should think.

A good time was had by all.

(Hat tip to Jonathan Eisen) This is big news - the Large Hadron Collider, which supposedly shut down for repairs, has been operating in secret for months now. According to the New York Times:

The giant Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most expensive scientific experiment, was not shut down for repairs as originally reported (see New Particle Collider to Be Shut for Repairs), scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva said today.

The NY Times got a tip in their mailbox, which they followed up on.

However, two weeks ago, the New York Times received an anonymous package that contained video recordings and other evidence that the accelerator was in full operation over the winter. Nobody from CERN would comment on the record about this evidence. However, two leading CERN scientists did confirm on condition of anonymity, that the accelerator was in use.

What have they been working on all this time?

Most striking, leading CERN scientists have been consulting repeatedly with prominent molecular biologists regarding apparent mutagenic properties of particles, presumably a new particle discovered in the accelerator. This has been confirmed by CERN scientists who spoke on condition of anonymity. Multiple sources have said that they believe they have found a particle that not only is highly mutagenic but appears to have an unusual affinity for DNA. The sources also stated that it was the mutagenic potential of the accelerator that led to the secrecy and false claims of a shutdown.

I’m very concerned about what this means for future operations of the LHC - if people get the idea that these scientists will lie to the public - how will people trust them down the road? Read the story for more.