Dear Senator Boxer,
I don't know what your position is on the Gitmo detainees being brought to the US for trial but I would like to express mine.
We want this to be a country ruled by law, not by the mob. When I heard Senator Reid say "no detainees will enter the US" I was shocked and extremely disappointed. The only fair way to close the Gitmo chapter of our history is to do the right thing, get them tried in real courts and either released or imprisoned in this country.
I fail to understand what the fear is for bringing them into the country? We have equally dangerous people in our prisons already. We have terrorists already in our prisons (unibomber & McVey to name two). If we can't imprison properly 200 from gitmo, we have bigger problems.
Obama is being forced by the Senate to follow the failed path of G Bush because of this. Please help change this course back to the rule of law. The rule of fear and the mob doesn't work.
30 May, 2009
Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run! | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!
Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!
All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!"
21 May, 2009
Ready for the airshow
Plane is cleaned up, hangar is ready, hot dog stand is under control.
Time for an airshow!
20 May, 2009
Modern day Isaacs
Modern day Isaacs:
"Colleen Hauser has flown the coop. She has defied a court order to bring her sick son, Daniel Hauser, to a qualified doctor for essential medical care. The boy has Hodgkins lymphoma, a disease with a very good prognosis if treated soon, but is a painful death sentence within a few years if neglected. His mother, though, is fervently religious, and no doubt smug in her righteousness, has bundled her son into a car and is devoutly driving to Mt. Moriah. I hope she's not expecting an angel of the lord to appear and spare her son."
...
"You are Abraham's enablers. I hope you all feel a small tremor of guilt when you sit your own children down at bedtime to beg a nonexistent being for aid, when you plant the seed of futile supplication and surrender to delusions in their trusting minds. Damn you all."
Yes. Damn them all.
Also damn the California voters who voted against Props 1A through 1E. Now we're screwed. I hope Arnold lets thousands of prisoners out, lets So Cal and Nor Cal burn this summer, and the passes over 80 and 50 don't get plowed next winter. Not to mention the millions of kids getting crappier education. Some Jarvis anti-tax ass said "when households lose 1/3 their income, the HBO goes before the food". So Jarvis ass-wipe, what is California's HBO? What are you going to cut?
And damn the US Senate for its Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) for the gitmo prisoners, I've got to find out if either of my senators voted against funding to close Gitmo to prevent them coming to CA. I can't believe it. WTF!?! What are they afraid of? They will be in prison! Worse people are in our country now in our prisons! Just because they weren't born here they shouldn't be in our prisons? I guess we should just let them go home. That is the only choice if the NIMBY attitude is continues.
"Colleen Hauser has flown the coop. She has defied a court order to bring her sick son, Daniel Hauser, to a qualified doctor for essential medical care. The boy has Hodgkins lymphoma, a disease with a very good prognosis if treated soon, but is a painful death sentence within a few years if neglected. His mother, though, is fervently religious, and no doubt smug in her righteousness, has bundled her son into a car and is devoutly driving to Mt. Moriah. I hope she's not expecting an angel of the lord to appear and spare her son."
...
"You are Abraham's enablers. I hope you all feel a small tremor of guilt when you sit your own children down at bedtime to beg a nonexistent being for aid, when you plant the seed of futile supplication and surrender to delusions in their trusting minds. Damn you all."
Yes. Damn them all.
Also damn the California voters who voted against Props 1A through 1E. Now we're screwed. I hope Arnold lets thousands of prisoners out, lets So Cal and Nor Cal burn this summer, and the passes over 80 and 50 don't get plowed next winter. Not to mention the millions of kids getting crappier education. Some Jarvis anti-tax ass said "when households lose 1/3 their income, the HBO goes before the food". So Jarvis ass-wipe, what is California's HBO? What are you going to cut?
And damn the US Senate for its Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) for the gitmo prisoners, I've got to find out if either of my senators voted against funding to close Gitmo to prevent them coming to CA. I can't believe it. WTF!?! What are they afraid of? They will be in prison! Worse people are in our country now in our prisons! Just because they weren't born here they shouldn't be in our prisons? I guess we should just let them go home. That is the only choice if the NIMBY attitude is continues.
04 May, 2009
Proof that there is no god : Pharyngula
"Jenny McCarthy, dangerous quack and ignorant fraud, has just signed a contract with that professional peddler of pablum, Oprah Winfrey, to put on a syndicated talk show, among other media puffery. It's quite a step up. Oprah only spreads a kind of fuzzy mind-rot, but McCarthy actually promotes death and disease."
"I've heard that the hamthrax snoutbreak could turn into a hamdemic of aporkalyptic porkportions!"
"I've heard that the hamthrax snoutbreak could turn into a hamdemic of aporkalyptic porkportions!"
23 April, 2009
Day In The Sky 2009
Day in the Sky happened on the 18th. 451 people flew with 47 pilots and planes in 170 flights. It was quite a day! I got in five loads in between my hand wringing and coordinating with different groups. Several of Liz's students got rides and I saw mostly smiles and appreciation from parents/family. The air over Watsonville was filled with airplanes and NorCal air traffic control was amazed at what was happening. The pilots and ground crews did a great job keeping everyone safe. But next year... not so many planes/flights. Or somehow spread it out more evenly.
06 April, 2009
Religious vs Secular Morality
"the difference between religious and secular morality is this: will you obey, or will you strive?"
05 April, 2009
26 March, 2009
Irreducible Stupidity
Pharyngula: Even dumber than Denyse O'Leary?:
"'Irreducible Stupidity'. It makes an awful lot of sense. There do seem to be people who could not be any stupider and still breathe in and out."
This made me blow lemonade out my nose.
"'Irreducible Stupidity'. It makes an awful lot of sense. There do seem to be people who could not be any stupider and still breathe in and out."
This made me blow lemonade out my nose.
20 March, 2009
The Arrogance of Ignorance
· The more you learn about a subject, the more you realize that you don’t know.
· Corollary: If you think you have a complete grasp of a subject, you are probably wrong.
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=140
10 March, 2009
How creationism should be taught in the classroom
Pharyngula: How creationism should be taught in the classroom:
"The way I actually teach genetics is essentially a temporal series of criticisms. I start with Darwin's pangenesis for a little historical background, and tell them this is wrong, and here's why, criticizing it on the basis of it's ad hoc nature and its failure to fit experimental observations. Then I introduce Mendel, and we see his view of particulate, quantifiable inheritance, and how it superseded Darwin, and then I show how parts of it are wrong, with experiments that show how it fails, which leads into linkage. And then I show how some of our initial concepts of chromosomal inheritance are wrong, with work done on extrachromosomal factors. Step by step, we build a case for a complex and detailed understanding of the rules of heredity by experiment…where even the experiments that go 'wrong' (that is, don't show us the results we expected from existing theory) help us acquire a deeper understanding of the process.
In a way, it's a pretty ruthless business. Weak handwaving, of the sort that Darwin was doing in his theory of inheritance, doesn't cut it and gets chopped apart savagely with the bloody cleaver of experiment. Creationism is far, far weaker than Darwin's 19th century proposal, so you can guess how it fares.
When the proponents of creationism ask that their nonsense be taught in school, there is an implicit expectation that the scientists will put away their implements of destruction and suspend the savagery while their delicate little flower of unsupportable fluff is discussed reverentially. That is not going to happen. If it did, it wouldn't be a science class."
"The way I actually teach genetics is essentially a temporal series of criticisms. I start with Darwin's pangenesis for a little historical background, and tell them this is wrong, and here's why, criticizing it on the basis of it's ad hoc nature and its failure to fit experimental observations. Then I introduce Mendel, and we see his view of particulate, quantifiable inheritance, and how it superseded Darwin, and then I show how parts of it are wrong, with experiments that show how it fails, which leads into linkage. And then I show how some of our initial concepts of chromosomal inheritance are wrong, with work done on extrachromosomal factors. Step by step, we build a case for a complex and detailed understanding of the rules of heredity by experiment…where even the experiments that go 'wrong' (that is, don't show us the results we expected from existing theory) help us acquire a deeper understanding of the process.
In a way, it's a pretty ruthless business. Weak handwaving, of the sort that Darwin was doing in his theory of inheritance, doesn't cut it and gets chopped apart savagely with the bloody cleaver of experiment. Creationism is far, far weaker than Darwin's 19th century proposal, so you can guess how it fares.
When the proponents of creationism ask that their nonsense be taught in school, there is an implicit expectation that the scientists will put away their implements of destruction and suspend the savagery while their delicate little flower of unsupportable fluff is discussed reverentially. That is not going to happen. If it did, it wouldn't be a science class."
06 March, 2009
Kepler Mission
Looking for other earth like planets!
Deb McCabe working at the LASP is doing mission operations for this program.
Deb McCabe working at the LASP is doing mission operations for this program.
05 March, 2009
28 February, 2009
'Heat the Hornet' by Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net
'Heat the Hornet' by Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net:
"A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true. "
"Coyne is right to identify the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism as the idea that, in evolution, “everything happens by chance”. This common claim is flat wrong – obviously wrong, transparently wrong, even to the meanest intelligence (a phrase that has me actively restraining myself). If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn’t work at all. Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false. This one misunderstanding, single-handed, accounts for much of the uncomprehending opposition to evolution that made it necessary for Jerry Coyne to write his book in the first place. The need was great; the execution is superb. Please read it."
I am reading this book (Why Evolution Is True, by Jerry Coyne) and am enjoying it a lot. Every High School Senior should read it before going to college. :-)
"A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true. "
"Coyne is right to identify the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism as the idea that, in evolution, “everything happens by chance”. This common claim is flat wrong – obviously wrong, transparently wrong, even to the meanest intelligence (a phrase that has me actively restraining myself). If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn’t work at all. Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false. This one misunderstanding, single-handed, accounts for much of the uncomprehending opposition to evolution that made it necessary for Jerry Coyne to write his book in the first place. The need was great; the execution is superb. Please read it."
I am reading this book (Why Evolution Is True, by Jerry Coyne) and am enjoying it a lot. Every High School Senior should read it before going to college. :-)
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