Criminally Incompetent Teachers

Over at Kent Hovind’s Whinery, I ran across this comment:

I am a high school science teacher. So far I have been able to teach creation science a couple years without being stopped by administration. I spend as much time if not more teaching creation science as I do going thru the textbook they make me use. Of course, I skip all the chapters with evolution. I use Dr. Hovind’s seminar notebook and his book Are You Being Brainwashed. In a couple weeks I will be going at it again. I pray I can continue to do the same as I have been.

Hopefully, this guy is just lying, and has made the whole thing up. Because if not, that means he’s not just failing to teach the kids science, he’s teaching them antiscience, filling their heads with nonsense that has to be unlearned before they can be properly taught. He’s skipping important parts of the curriculum. He’s bringing in “teaching” materials by a wackjob so far out there that even other young-earth creationists have asked him to stop. And if this has really been going on for years, we have to consider the possibility that the school administration knows about his activities, but is turning a blind eye to them.

How would one go about subpoenaing cseblogs.com’s httpd logs to see where this clown posted from, to see whether any of it is true?

Arming the Enemy

From the Washington Post:

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

Can this administration do anything without it turning to shit?

And I don’t want to hear another word about “criticizing the war emboldens the enemy” or any crap like that. Not while the government’s own incompetence is inadvertently supplying weapons—actual steel weapons, not metaphorical ones—to the people shooting at our troops.

Math for Middle-School Girls

HT to for pointing me at Math Doesn’t Suck, by Danica McKellar. It’s a math book aimed at middle- and high school girls. The main message seem to be a) math doesn’t suck, and isn’t as hard as you think it is, and b) if you’re smart, don’t hide it. Both worthwhile messages.

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know whether it lives up to its hype, but if it leads to more women realizing that they can do math, then that’s all good.

Oh, and may I just point out, as a guy, that smart is teh sexy?

Fifty Bucks, Same As In the Vestry

Religious scandals are always fun, whether it’s Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, or Tommy Tester.

According to the Kingsport, TN Times-News, police in Johnson City, TN, accosted Tester to investigate reports of indecent exposure. Tester, a Baptist minister, radio host, and all-around upstanding citizen, was obviously rattled by this:

“He said they (Johnson City police) scared him–he was scared to death and didn’t know what he’d said or what he’d admitted or anything else,” Morris said.

So rattled was he that he offered the cops blow jobs.

He then got out of his car, lifted his skirt, and peed on a car wash in front of some kids.

The cops also found an open bottle of vodka in his car.

According to reports, Tester also allegedly admitted to police that he had been drinking and failed all field sobriety tests.

He’s been charged with indecent exposure, DUI, and having an open container of alcohol.

Update, 16:13: Well, that didn’t take long. familmusicgroup.com has a gallery of photos of the site owner with various radio people at a convention last year. According to Google’s cache, as of July 15, that page included a photo of Tommy Tester. Not anymore.

God in the Texas Pledge

Did you know that Texas has a pledge, much like the pledge of allegiance? I didn’t, until I ran across this article in the Houston Chronicle saying that the Texas legislature has added to it the words “one state under God”.

Why? Debbie Riddle (R-Gilead) says:

“Personally, I felt like the Texas pledge had a big old hole in it, and it occurred to me, ‘You know what? We need to fix that,’ “

Perhaps the good citizens of Texas would have been better served if their state legislators had looked to Iraq and taken the month off.

I don’t see how this can possibly pass constitutional muster. According to the article, saying the Texas pledge has been mandatory since 2003. If there’s a more clear-cut case of violation of separation of church and state, I haven’t seen one yet. Then again, if and when someone sues (the article quotes Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State), they’ll be able to whip people up into a frenzy over those damlibruls who “want to take God out of our schools”.

What would Jesus think of this sort of all-god, all the time mentality?

Matthew 6: 5“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

But I don’t suppose one can expect True Christians to listen to some 2000-year-old long-haired hippie Jew.

GHE EULA: WTF?

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is out. One weird thing about it is at the bottom of the copyright notice on the back of the manual:

ACTIVISION EXPRESSLY PROHIBITS THE USE OF THE GAME WITH ANY CONTROLLERS OTHER THAN ACTIVISION AUTHORIZED CONTROLLERS OR THE STANDARD GAME CONTROLLERS.

(This also appears at the bottom of the web site.)

I’ve seen some weird restrictions in EULAs before, but WTF? This is like saying that you can only use Microsoft Office with a Microsoft keyboard. Are they trying to protect the sales of $60 Guitar Hero controllers? Or are they just being dickish control freaks or something?

Thanks to for pointing this out.

Argento on Lohan

Once again, Mike Argento nails it:

You can’t turn around without the TV news bloviating endlessly about the troubles of Lindsay Lohan. On Wednesday, the “Today” show had a panel of experts discussing whatever it was she is accused of doing.
[…]

I have no idea who Lindsay Lohan is and I really don’t care. What makes me sad is that she apparently is the new Paris Hilton, the latest poster child for our civilization circling the drain.

Meanwhile, while Lindsay Lohan was dominating the news, the Department of Defense announced the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Bobby Twitty, 20, of Bedias, Texas.

We know everything we ever thought we needed to know about Lindsay Lohan.

Lance Cpl. Twitty? Not so much.

The Worst README in the World

While trying to install some drivers on a machine, I ran across for them.

CONTENTS

1.0	About this README file
1.1	  Who should read this README file
1.2	  How to get help
2.0	IBM2105.RTE Change History
3.0	Procedure for upgrading AIX OS, Host attachment, and/or SDD
4.0	User license agreement for IBM device drivers
4.1	  Background / Purpose
4.2	  Definitions
4.3	  License grant
4.4	  Responsibilities
4.5	  Confidential information
4.6	  Limitation of liability
4.7	  Termination
4.8	  Representations and warranties
4.9	  General provisions
5.0	Appendix A
6.0	Notices
7.0	Trademarks and service marks

How anal is it to include a table of contents in a README? I just hope that the section numbers are updated automatically. It would really suck to be the guy in charge of manually renumbering the table of contents when someone edits the file.

At any rate, note that the only interesting part is section 3.0, the actual installation instructions. That section reads, in full:

3.0  Procedure for upgrading AIX OS, Host attachment, and/or SDD

     Please refer to the latest SDD readme file for the detailed procedure.

Wow. Three lines. Out of a 522-line file. And all to say “this is not the file you’re looking for.”

I think the stick up IBM’s ass has officially taken over the entire company.

Lowest Common Denominator

I was just thinking of the phrase “lowest common denominator” in the sense of something lowbrow that appeals to the unwashed masses, rather than something refined. And it occurred to me that in math, the lowest common denominator of a group of (natural) numbers is always going to be 1. What’s more interesting is the largest common denominator: it’s more interesting to know that 12 and 20 are both divisible by 4, than that they’re both divisible by 1.

Admittedly, I didn’t learn this part of arithmetic in the US (or even in English), so it’s possible that the phrase “lowest common denominator” is commonly understood to mean 1/n. In the example above, 1/4 is < 1/1, so 1/4 could be viewed as the lowest common denominator of 12 and 20.

But another possibility is that the phrase “lowest common denominator”, as applied to marketing and popular tastes, was originally ironic: a filmmaker might want to make a movie that appeals to the largest common denominator, i.e., one that’s as highbrow as possible, while still appealing to everyone. A critic who said that a movie appealed to the lowest common denominator would be saying that the movie appealed to the public’s basest tastes and wasn’t even trying to be good.

I haven’t found an etymological reference to confirm or disprove this, but I think it’s at least possible that the phrase started out ironic, but that over time people forgot this.

35 Years Ago

Phil Plait reminds us that 38 years ago, Neil Armstrong was the first person in history to set foot on another world.

But how many of you remember the last astronaut on the moon?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svAQ6BCIgxg]