soapbox

I just found out that the Twins have a pitcher named Boof Bonser. That had to be quite a weight growing up.

Or now for that matter.

Good times. Did you know that all animals were vegetarians until Adam and Eve sinned? If you didn’t, you should go to the new Creation museum to learn the way that things really happened. Hint: it’s not what scientists want you to believe.

Ky. Creation Museum opens to thousands – Yahoo! News

The thing that I really fail to understand is why God would want all the animals to be vegetarians. Eating a plant kills the plant. Really, all the animals should have been fruitarians and eaten only things that would naturally fall from the tree and be dead. Eating a living plant is no better than eating a tasty bunny.

Can your dog/cat do this?

Or you can just buy one of the following puuuma shirts.

The recent issues with Iran have made me wonder more than a little bit if they’re trying to pick a fight so that we’ll march in and make things better. Just imagine a speech to their people once we leave, “You may think you want more person freedoms, but look how horribly the [big devil] Americans did. You’d much rather have a strict Islamic state, wouldn’t you?”

That made me think of The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a tiny little country with monetary issues in post-WWII Europe who decides that the way to fortune is to declare war on the US, lose, and then get tons of support. In the end, they accidentally win and much hilarity ensues. It was a great read in middle school.

Anyway, I bought the book from amazon and now they point out other books that would match similar searches. This brings me to The Mouse that Roared by Dwayne Murray Sr. An electrician from New York who now dabbles in thriller novels. The interesting thing here is that Amazon now lists out “Statistically Improbable Phrases” for books. Basically, they’re phrases that should be more or less unique to a given author, clever turns of phrase unique to the book. Dwayne Murray Sr. apparently used the phrase “bully club” several times in his book while no other work of fiction contains that phrase. It kind of makes me wonder what exactly it is… is it a club for bullies to join so they can sit around and discuss proper bullying methods? a club specifically designed to stop a bully in his tracks? or, is it, as I fear, a repeated error in the book because the author doesn’t know what a billy-club is. That answer doesn’t bode well for the book as a whole.

S. Colbert: vicious liar… Nothing really new here, but I love comment number 3370. makes me cringe.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making fun of the California woman who died while trying to win a water-drinking contest.  (as an aside, how sucky is that whole situation, especially since people told the DJs that it wasn’t safe and they were ignored?)  But that said, banning water pong is a little extreme – or is it just me?

Yes I know, good intentions, blah blah, litigation, blah blah… but please, use some common sense?  The article makes it sound like it’s a good excuse  to ban an undesired activity – water damage, noise in the study space, etc – if that’s the case then own up and admit it.

After reading a web page linked from Zosia’s facebook account about the limited number of women in science (and specifically physics) I did some thinking yesterday. This is my thought: contrary to the popular conception, I do not think that some failure of equality or instruction is the cause of the bias in graduation rates of men and women in the sciences. Obviously, there will be some specific cases to the contrary where idiots have told their female students “physics is too hard for girls.” However, I claim that the actual difference is one of opportunity — and women have more opportunity than men.
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